by Anya Seton
Budgeo chuckled again. “He warn’t as gabby as most furriners,” he said, approvingly. Hesper smiled, warmed by the sun. Budgeo pulled hard against the incoming tide. The wherry rocked gently. Except for a few dories the great harbor was empty. Far ahead of them in the South Channel, an East Indiaman sailed past, bound for Salem.
Budgeo tied up at the rickety Neck dock. Hesper jumped out.
“You goin’ to walk back by the Beach or cornin’ home with me in about two hour?” asked Budgeo.
“I don’t know,” said Hesper, and with the voicing of it she was engulfed by the futility of this expedition. What use was it coming over to the Neck? What use to go to Castle Rock, or to look at the sea? She trudged up the path that led toward Martin Ham’s farm, but before she reached it she branched off through scrub pine and sand, heading for the ocean on the other side. Her steps dragged. It was hot here in the middle of the Neck. Might go and look at the Churn, she thought listlessly, but even that mild excitement would be unavailable today. The wind and the tide were wrong. I might wade, she thought.
Behind Castle Rock there was a cove and a strip of shingle called Ballast Beach, because the ballast lighters often put in here to gather the heavy round stones. She scrambled down the bank and stood at the line of foam breathing deeply. It was just about here Johnnie and I landed that day war was declared, she thought, but it was only a faint, bitter memory. It was good to be alone with the ocean and the sun, and no living thing in sight except a square-rigger out beyond Halfway Rock.
Hesper stared through the dazzling blue at the Halfway Rock. The outgoing fishing fleet always tossed pennies at it with prayers for a full fare and a safe return. Fathoms deep in the blackness the ocean bed must be spangled with pennies, she thought. That might make a poem; indestructible pennies, indestructible wishes glinting through the darkness of time.
She sat down on a chunk of driftwood, wadding her brown merino skirt up under her, and thought about it. But there was no rhyme for wishes except fishes, which might be appropriate but not elegant, and none at all for pennies.
She sighed and gave it up. There was a small breeze but it was still hot. She took off her heavy shoes and darned cotton stockings, laying them carefully above high-water mark. She kilted her skirt up around her thighs, showing the hemstitching on her cambric drawers, and pulled the coarse net off her hair. Her loosened hair fell across her shoulders and down her back like a rippling red-gold shawl. It made her hotter than ever, but she had loosened it because of an earlier and happier memory of Johnnie. Twelve years ago when they were children they had sailed to the Neck one summer afternoon and gone wading like this. Now, when she felt the cold water on her feet and the salt breeze in her hair, it brought back a little of the magic of that earlier afternoon.
She waded deeper into the water, waiting for the slow waves to break around her ankles, running out as far as she dared, following the suck-back to sea, counting for the seventh or the eighth big one.
I should be ashamed at my age, she thought, playing silly games like this. Thank heaven there’s nobody to know. She gave a quick guilty look around her and was transfixed by the sight of a man leaning against an abutment of Castle Rock staring in her direction and apparently sketching.
She clutched at her sodden skirts trying frantically to loosen them from under the belt where she had tucked the bunched hems.
She had forgotten the ocean behind her; the great wave swept up in its own rhythm and swirling at her knees knocked her down.
Her mouth and nose filled with choking green water, her fingers clawed at the shifting pebbles, and for a moment of gasping fear she felt the bottom drop away beneath her and the backwash suck her outward. Then her neck snapped back; even through her terror she felt sharp pain in her head, and then under her hands again the tumbling gritty shingle. Another yank at her head, reinforced by one at her waist, and she lay panting on the beach.
She lay raised on one elbow coughing and spitting out the sea water, while a hand thumped her forcefully between the shoulder blades.
In a moment she sat up and looked at her rescuer. Wet to the waist, his blue trousers plastered to his legs, he seemed very tall and thin. His dark, narrow face was tanned as any fisherman’s. And he was looking down at her with an expression so new to her experience—a blend of speculative interest and amusement—that the shock of it counterbalanced the physical shock of her escape.
“Thank you—” she panted, still coughing. “I don’t know how I could’ve been so stupid, I’m bred to the water, but I didn’t expect to see anyone—”
She pulled her wet skirts closer about her bare legs and blushed.
He nodded. “Lucky you’ve got so much hair. Handy to grab on to. It streamed through the water in back of you.” He looked down at his hands. Several of her long bright hairs still clung to his wrists. He plucked them off, twisting them together, and frowning down at them. “Strange color. Hard to get,” he said thoughtfully...”
Hesper scrambled to her feet, hurt to encounter here again a taunt about her hair, and hurt too, by a sensation of anticlimax. He was young, and in an odd way attractive, he had just fished her out of the sea and probable drowning, now surely there should be drama of some sort. Or at least, gratitude and chivalrous declaimer.
She made another attempt. “You saved my life, sir. I don’t know how to thank you. I’m Hesper Honeywood, I live in the town. If there’s anything—”
“Yes, there is.” He spoke decisively. “Stand right there as you are now, and let me sketch you. I’d started while you were paddling around in the water, but this is better. Now your clothes are wet I can see your body structure.”
Again the color flamed to her face and anger with it, when suddenly he smiled and added, “You’ve a fine body. Good bones. You’re really a beautiful woman.”
Hesper felt her mouth fall open. She stared at him suspiciously. He was smiling but there was, surely, no mockery in the smile. Instead there was warmth and friendliness. He had short teeth, white as corn milk, dazzling against his dark skin. The smile vanished; he turned to the rock where he had laid his sketching things. The pad, the pencils, the square box. She noted with surprise, that though he must have run to rescue her, yet he must also have taken time to lay all these down first.
“Just look out to sea, toward that rock out there, turn towards me just a trifle,” he called, assuming her consent. “Oh, and tuck your skirt up again, the way it was. I want your legs and feet.”
“No!” she cried. “I’ll not indeed.” Otherwise standing as he wished her to. He shrugged and said nothing, picked up a long piece of charcoal and began to sketch.
She stood turned in profile to him, staring out toward Halfway Rock and two strong and conflicting emotions possessed her. It didn’t occur to him that she was soaked through, and in need of warmth and rest after such an experience; on the other hand he was wet too, the sun was hot and he had saved her life. She thought of Budgeo the ferryman’s reference to the artist feller, “Gruff and grouty.” Well, he was that sure enough, but there was more. “Beautiful,” he’d said. The syllables sang in her head like a melody. A beautiful woman. She held her shoulders back, raising her bosom proudly.
The sun dipped behind the trees on the Neck, purple and rose lights streaked across the ocean. The breeze freshened and she shivered. She turned her head and looked toward him appealingly.
She saw him nod and put down the pad. He walked toward her. “That was fine. You’re a good model. You’ll pose again tomorrow? I want to do a water color.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. I’ve work to do at home.” She began to twist up her still damp hair, bundling it into the drab net. “Please to turn your back while I put on my shoes and stockings.”
He gave a grunt of laughter, went back to the rock where he assembled his paraphernalia. When she was ready she joined him. “Can I see the picture?” He pulled back the cover and showed her the drawing. She stared at it, disappointed, and embarrassed. The figure
of a woman, certainly, and all in curves, breasts, hips and swirling hair, but he’d drawn the sea in curves too so you could hardly tell the woman from the waves. And he’d drawn her with bare legs anyway.
“You don’t like it?” he said flipping back the cover. But she saw that he had not the slightest interest in her opinion, and again she had the feeling of anticlimax.
“Well, I’ll be going,” she said dully. “Good-bye.”
“Wait!”
She looked up at him and saw a change in his face. Up to now though he had been staring at her, and all the time he had been drawing her it was as though he had wrapped himself in a veil. The recognition had been oblique and at one remove. He smiled now again, that penetrating smile, and she felt herself become focused for him.
“Look, Hesper—” he said, putting his long brown hand on her arm, “Was that your name? Mine’s Evan Redlake. Why—your sleeve’s still wet. I’m a thoughtless beast. Here.” He opened the red kerchief and took out a small flask of wine. “Drink some.”
She obeyed, finding the red liquid nasty and sour. Ma’d never have served a wine like that in the taproom. He finished the bottle himself and threw it far out to sea. “Now come on—we’ll run and warm you up.” He flung his left arm around her waist and rushed her up the slope.
“Oh please—” she cried. “Let me go—” but he paid no attention, and the two of them pursued a headlong scramble over and around the sumach, the scrub pine, and the furry mullein stalks.
He stopped at last when they reached the ferry path. And Hesper found herself laughing, her cheeks hot, her heart pounding, and yielding to that pressure around her waist, the first intimate masculine touch—since Johnnie.
“Now you’ve come to life,” said Evan. He took his hand from her waist and pressing it behind her head kissed her deliberately on the mouth.
Hesper gasped. She raised her fists and gave him a violent reflex shove on the chest. But he had already released her, and the shove was meaningless.
“Ungraceful,” he observed. “Hesper, you need teaching. You have beauty and strength and probably passion, but you don’t know it, or at least you don’t act it. Hold your head up and stop slouching. How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-four,” she said sulkily, turning her back on him and beginning to walk down the path. Stinging tears filled her eyes. He walked along beside her swinging his red kerchief and the tin box.
“Then you’re a grown woman,” he said, “and should act like one.”
“You’re not the one to teach me,” she said, quickening her step. Evan did not answer. They walked in silence until they reached the top of the harbor slope.
“Would you know—” said Evan suddenly, “of any place in town I could board for a few days ? Marblehead suits me well.”
Yes, thought Hesper with violence. He can go to Martin Ham’s or the Marblehead Hotel or to Mrs. Cap’n Barney’s at Redstone Cove. Far away as possible.
“Hesper—” he said softly, and again he put a detaining hand on her arm. Through her sleeve she felt its warmth and she looked down at it quickly, sidewise.
“We keep an inn,” she said, her eyes on the row of houses across the harbor. “Likely Ma’d find room for you.”
“Good,” he said.
CHAPTER 9
EVAN REDLAKE was born in Amherst in 1838. His parents were well to do. His father, Thaddeus Redlake, owned a small paper mill on the north branch of the Fort River, and the Redlakes lived on College Avenue in a new and comfortable yellow frame building adorned with elegant white pilasters and a mansard roof topped by a white-railinged “captain’s walk.” This feature had no functional purpose on a house in a small inland town, but Mrs. Redlake had been a New Bedford girl, and strongly attached to her home. She was a woman of decided views on all subjects, and five o£ her six children had been impressed by a. formidable stamping iron. The four girls and young Simon yielded without undue rebellion to the maternal pressure.
The girls were accomplished and demure. Mary played the pianoforte while Bessie sang plaintive ballads in a small fluting voice, Lucy was. skilled at hair embroidery, and Harriet painted charming woodland scenes upon china. Mrs. Redlake herself had a talent for water colors, the faithful petal-by-petal reproduction of floral arrangements, and the Redlake artistic causeries accompanied by light wine and cakes were an esteemed feature of Amherst life.
Evan, however, had never taken part in the artistic causeries. This was all the more disappointing to Mrs. Redlake, since he appeared to. show marked interest in drawing from the moment he could hold a pencil.
His mother encouraged him and set herself to giving him drawing lessons. These were a failure. Evan would not make a delicate shading chart. Evan would not copy the elaborate designs presented in Mrs, Stebbins’ First Steps in Art.
In fact, as long as his mother insisted on the bi-weekly drawing lessons, and sat purposefully across the table loaded with pencils, water colors, and sheets of paper, Evan would not draw at all. He was not sulky or verbally resistant—those traits Mrs. Redlake could have. handled with dispatch—he simply fixed upon his mother the candid stare of polite boredom and waited until she had finished.
“But, Evan, you like to draw, look at all those pretty little pictures you did of kitty. Of course they didn’t look much like kitty because you have a lot to learn, but they were very good for a little boy.”
“They weren’t supposed to be kitty,” said Evan calmly. “They were what a cat makes me think of, and they weren’t no good at all.”
“Any good,” said Mrs. Redlake. “Well, my dear, I see what you mean, that’s quite a deep thought, and that’s what I try to do myself, see the inner truth of objects; all artists do, I guess—”
Here she smiled companionably at Evan, but his eyes had wandered, they rested on the rustling green elm branch across the window. His expression was one of complete and unselfconscious detachment.
“Evan!” Her voice was sharp, and he brought his gaze back. He had long dark eyes; the lids were heavy and gave him at times an oddly un-Anglo-Saxon look disconcerting to Mrs. Redlake. None of the other children had it, nor the curved mouth suggesting a sensuous softness that his square and jutting chin denied. She reassured herself by attributing these features to the Welsh blood in her own family.
“Evan, I insist that you start shading that square at once. Start here, very faint, in the upper corner.”
Evan allowed the pencil to be put in his hand and made a few inept scrabbling marks.
“Pay attention, you’re not keeping in the lines. Evan! You can do better than that. Stop that stupid messing. I shall have to punish you.”
Evan put down the pencil, folded his flexible little hands together, and waited. His gaze wandered back to the elm branch.
In this and all other matters in which her will ran counter to Evan’s Mrs. Redlake suffered defeat. Gradually as he grew through adolescence into manhood, she resigned herself and took outward pride in his nonconformity. “He’s quite a mystery to us, I must admit. He seems to have no interest in the usual boyhood pursuits. Of course he has inherited my own interest in art, but he does nothing about it. It’s quite tiresome.”
Nor did Thaddeus understand his son, but he was a calm man, unburdened by subtlety. The girls were marrying well, one to an Amherst Classic professor, another to a Boston merchant.
The younger ones had plenty of beaux; Simon the baby was as normal a boy as a father could wish, in and out of trivial scrapes and already intelligent about the workings of the paper mill. If Evan was a disappointment with his long silences, his disappearances for days at a time when he apparently did nothing more sinister than take solitary walking trips, his absolute refusal to attend college—well, at least the boy gave no trouble, and it might be worse.
In 1857, when he was nineteen, Evan left home for good. He announced his decision one morning at the breakfast table, and he prefaced it by his rare and attractive smile.
“I’ve had enough o
f Amherst,” he said. “It’s too pretty. You’ll not be sorry to have me go, Mother. I know I’ve been a trial to you.”
To Mrs. Redlake’s indignant protests he listened with his polite air of detachment and he looked at her not unkindly.
“But what are you aiming to do, Evan?” asked his father.
Evan lavishly buttered a slab of fried johnnycake. “I shall paint.” He bit into the johnnycake and chewed it lingeringly, savoring the buttery crispness. His mother watching him knew a familiar annoyance. He always seemed to capture a sharp, almost sensual pleasure from eating.
And from other bodily sensations too. Sometimes he would lie for hours in the one stationary bathtub, floating dreamily in the tepid water, selfishly excluding all who wished to enter the bathroom. And he had a really indecent passion for odors. Once she had found on his pillow a decaying fungus edged with blue mold, and to her outraged question he had answered that he liked to smell it because it had a sharp gray clean smell.
“You can’t support yourself with painting, my boy,” said his father heavily. “And what makes you think you can? You’ve done no drawing for years.”
“I know I can,” said Evan placidly munching. His bright dark eyes turned to his mother and away quickly. He thought of the shack in the woods a hundred feet from the bank of the Connecticut. He had built the shack himself when he was twelve, and here he had lived his real life. The walls were papered with drawings, in pencil, in charcoal, and lately, though most of them fed the fire in the small smoky fireplace, there had been water colors of the rocks and the chestnut trees along the riverbank. And now he was sick of the shack, and the trees and the river. They had served their purpose.
“I mean to travel,” he said. “And I mean to paint.” He buttered another piece of johnnycake, poured maple syrup over it.
“And how will you eat?” snapped his mother. “You like to eat, you know.”