She was sniffling, patting her lips. "Let it go." In spite of the small gust of tears she was alert and brisk. "Be you paying or him?"
"I am. How—how much?"
"Ho, and if he's not, how comes he to lay about him so?" She broke off, laughing indulgently. "Never thee mind, Master Just Benjamin. Two such lovely girls! Well now, if you're a-mind to buy us a wee trifle of rum—so pleasant with a dab of butter, don't you think?—and the girls...."
Ben re-entered the parlor with enlarged wisdom and a shrunken wallet. The books for Reuben, lying in a chair, comforted him: at least some of his money had been well spent.
"Don't allow her to rob you, a devil's name," said Shawn drowsily. "No highwayman liveth but could learn jolly tricks of a bawd."
Glancing down at the alien profile, wondering in passing whether he even liked Daniel Shawn, Ben felt disinclined to mention that the robbery, if that was the name for it, had already taken place. He jingled the few pence and farthings remaining, and waited, himself alone on an island within a cavern.
She entered abruptly with good-natured bounce and giggle, plump and moon-faced, smelling of rose-water and sweat. As she paused in the doorway her transparent smock offered Ben a silhouette of cushiony thighs, by her intent maybe, and then she was coming to him directly with nothing for Shawn but a glance that might or might not have held recognition. "There's the sweet cod," she said, and cupped Ben's chin in her hands, and was on his lap, heavy and squirming, elastic, moist and warm.
In Deerfield, "whore" was only a word, seldom used except in back-of-the-barn profanity or Bible readings. It had never occurred to Ben, but did now as Laura twitched his shirt open and rubbed a knowing silky hand over his nipples, that a whore might be a human being, and friendly.
Another girl, stately and yellow-haired, sat in dignity across the room from Shawn—surely not cowlike as he had said but quite beautiful in her stillness, conveying an impression that she was not really present. A woman on an island. Shawn had remained in his idle sprawl, studying the queenly repose of her like a man who might yawn any moment. "Be you pleased with me?" Laura whispered, and nibbled Ben's ear.
"Of course." With some enterprise he found a smooth kneecap and sent his hand exploring, since she seemed to expect it; and then he thought: Too much of that damned ale—or maybe I'm ill—and now we must even have buttered rum!
All the same, it was unmistakable relief when Mistress Gundy pottered back, ahead of a gangling servant with the drinks. "Well, I'm sure," said the little madam—"to the Queen, God bless her!"
Laura bounced off Ben's lap at the call of patriotism. The tall quiet girl was on her feet, and Shawn too. But as Ben staggered, finding his leg half asleep, and drank dutifully, he was aware of a sudden annoyance in Daniel Shawn, and saw how with the mug at his lips the man was hardly tilting it at all. To Ben it was obscure, a thing he might tell himself he had not seen. This stifling moment, with fat Laura's arm hugging his loins, held no fair opportunity to think about it. But surely for all his strange, sometimes cruel speech and wild ways, Mr. Shawn was not disloyal—surely nobody ever refused to drink the health of Queen Anne!
Ben coughed as the cheap rum bored down his gullet. He saw Shawn grab the wrist of the tall girl and stride out of the room with her, not a word for courtesy. She had not even finished her drink.
"A hard man," said Mistress Gundy, comfortably stirring her mug. "Well, I told him. Just let him mark one of my girls, just once...."
"He won't, Mother," said Laura. "Why, that time——" A sharp glance from the old woman checked her. It held more than sharpness; they were exchanging some wry understanding, and Ben was oppressed at feeling himself a patronized, tiresome child. Laura tugged amiably at his arm. "Come to my room, love?" He followed her jiggling rear down a whispering hallway to a smaller cavern of stale roses. She had brought along the remains of his buttered rum. "Old bawd'd finish it, did you leave it there. A'n't she a caution, love?"
"Mm." Ben gulped a little more of it, finding it not so bad. Here the bed was virtually everything, but Laura was fond of dolls; a dozen of them sat about in comical attitudes, and Ben would have liked to say something about them. "Help me drink it, won't you? I had enough."
"Nay, I had too, and too much." She patted her stomach and yawned. With the casualness of habit, she pulled her smock up to her middle and dropped on the bed, fat thighs comfortably wide.
Ben shoved his drink aside. In daydream, yes—he had pictured such mindless complaisance in a woman who never quite owned a face. The reality was no more voluptuous than a belch or a kick under the ribs. Yet Laura was neither gross nor unclean—indeed, pretty in her overblown way, and certainly friendly. Repelled and hypnotized, he stumbled toward her, meeting, across the bulk of her pink flesh, a drowsy smile that suppressed another yawn. "What's the matter, love? Be you afeared of me?"
"Of course not."
"Ah—sweet cod—my little goat—whatever's the matter, love?" Her voice was thick and slow, the noise of a wave, her giggle the idle foam on a reaching wave. "Don't you know nothing, little goat?"
Ben fought with his clothes. For an instant in the candlelight the hair was golden, not dark, the pallid skin a damask rose. Then it was fat Laura again, nobody else—writhing, arching her heaviness, moaning, big arms reaching for him in practised simulation of hunger as Ben groped, struggled, and spent at the instant of contact with no pleasure, no excitement but that of fear and no relief but that of exhaustion.
Laura cursed casually under her breath, but as she sat up she was not noticeably angry—more amused, maybe a little concerned. "First time, dearie?" Ben nodded in misery. "Ho, never mind! You're very young."
"God damn, I'm seventeen."
"Hey! No cursing and swearing, boy!—I can't abide it.... Did something happen maybe? You know—spill salt at supper? Something?" She was serious, lightly worried. Ben shook his head. "Why, there!" She pointed at his jacket tossed on a chair, a bit of his kerchief dangling from a pocket. "Swoonds, that's bad luck as ever was," she said, and rolled off the bed to push the kerchief out of sight. "No bloody wonder!"
Ben knew she would take great offense if he laughed. Anyway the darkness of a new fear was killing laughter. She sat by a little square of wall-mirror to put her hair to rights. Ben ordered his clothes, finding his legs too large, blurred, disobedient. Maybe the last of that buttered rum would steady him. He gulped it down. "I'm sorry," said Ben.
"Hoo, it's a nothing, boy, happens all the time. Come again some day," she said, and could not resist a small parting cruelty: "When you're old enough."
The darkness of the new fear followed him out of the room, and the name of it was Pox.
Mistress Gundy sat as before with her rum, or somebody's rum, and nodded to Ben, waving her puckered hand in some cryptic courtesy. Her eyes were swimming—sad or hilarious or both. Somewhere down the hallway a woman was whimpering rhythmically. "Top of the evening, young man. I'm bloody mellow." Mistress Gundy patted her lips. "Going so soon? Parcel's yonder, needn't make out I'm keeping a den of thieves."
"Thank you. Had no such thought."
"No dallying with Venus? Up and off like a little bull? I'm bloody mellow or I wouldn't speak so free, but I say a bit of broad speech never hurt no one, la, besides, I lived on a farm when I was a little maid. Lord, the Surrey countryside, and I'll never see it again!" She wept comfortably, and burped. "A'n't you waiting for your friend?"
"I must be going. Tell him I couldn't wait."
"Tsha!" She drank, her little finger thrust out for gentility. "Come again, do. I feel sorry for you. My weakness." She held up her free hand earnestly to detain him. "Understand? I feel like a mother to you, but you—you—you——"
"I must be going."
"That's right, boy, turn away from an old whore. You—you—have—not—got the least notion wha's like to be old and lorn and forsaken, every man's bloo' hand raised against you. Have you? Colonial.Younever saw no earl, not in this Godforsaken land, marry you never. Why, one of the particular maids to 'is lady I was, and he got it in a linen-closet, now that's no lie as your nasty-spoken Irish friend would say. Understand?—the very self-same sheets 'er ladyship slep' on, the mere smell of lavender can still set me a-thinking of it, and her playing cards only two rooms away, if I'd so much as whimpered he might've been caught what they call flagrant delicious, and you think I'd do any such of a thing, loyal as I was? It shows your God-damned bloody ignorance, all the same there was a time you wouldn't've turned away."
Ben fled downstairs. The smells in the blackness of Fish Street were fresher. He thought, as in prayer: No harm done. None at all, unless he had caught the pox. Probably you couldn't, just from that much.
He dropped Reuben's books, his clumsiness a warning that he was drunk, his head grown to a foggy region of rising and roaring waves. He searched patiently for the parcel, since nothing could be done or considered till he found it. Stooping caused a rush of blood to his head, a tenor of collapse. He squatted, groping with clawed fingers, found the blessed hardness of the books and gathered them up. He knew a shrewd way to deal with this problem: he unfastened his belt, slid the end of it under the string of the parcel, and buckled it fast. Now the books bit his hipbone, but all was well—he would not lose them, and the not unwelcome discomfort would keep him sober on the long journey. The moon had not risen, or was covered by cloud. He supposed it was still early in the evening, but something had happened to his time sense.
Maybe, he thought, I have grown old and am too stupid to know it. Maybe the sun will discover me with white hair. Dried like a summer apple and no teeth. Bent on a stick, poor old Ben Cory. "Yaphoo!"
Yes, I heard that. That was me—old Cory, old Ben Cory, know him? A public shame in the middle of the street, but who'll notice old Ben Cory in the dark?
He advanced with precision on a street-lantern that showed him dingy house-fronts and the filthy gutter in the middle of the road, where a stray dog watched him sullenly, then slunk away, demoniac and lonely. Ben observed quietly that there were no pigs: his excellent judgment had chosen a time to walk on Fish Street when no pigs wallowed in it: alleluia. Of course only a fool would go to shouting "Yaphoo!" in such a place as if he were drunk, and he quite unarmed, carrying no money now to be sure, but dressed like one who had it. "I notice here," he said, "a fortuitous yet welcome opportunity." Stepping to the channel in the middle of the street, he relieved himself, with embarrassment. Untidy, but evidently in this part of town everyone did it. Startled, he thought: Oh, fine! Oh, wonderful!—now I could, while back there.... "Yaphoo!"There we go again!The rest of his comment came out as a harmlessly soft muttering: "... 'sn't anybody remember poor old Ben Coree, late of Deerfield?"
Someone, somewhere, not long ago, had pronounced his name in that odd foreign way. It would be pleasant to remember about that, for it had something to do with sunlight. Meanwhile, his breeches decently buttoned, he was making excellent progress toward another lamp, Reuben's books were safe, and he was utterly sober, gruesomely sober, sober as Mr. Cotton Mather. "Sober asallthe mamn Dathers," said Ben, and stumbled on something soft and screamed a little. Just a dead cat. Now if he might walk on in this patient way, past the grim windows and their occasional furtive gleam, he would arrive at another wholly dark section where a man, offending no one, might run a finger down his throat, lighten ship, and proceed.
He made it.
His stomach empty, he noted that in spite of perfect sobriety he was still tremendously drunk, whereat he laughed, but wriggling companion shadows to left and right of him did not. No: they were heavy-cold, banishing all warmth of amusement; imaginary but nasty, having the creeping urgency of sick dreams. He knew them to be imaginary in the light of that pale flame of reason which stayed alive in him under a long rising and subsidence of the waves, and here he asked himself acutely: how may one diminish the force of an imaginary creation, when naming it imaginary availeth not? Shall we assert, brethren, with overweening impudicity, that the imagination, by its own act of creation, hath given unto the shadow a substance akin to that which occupieth the carnal, corporeal yaphoo?
Cannily they remained behind him, receding, if he dared turn his head, with contemptuous ease. He knew them, though: open-eyed but dead, trivial heads with nothing left of the body but a flabby band of hide such as might be left by the sliding drag of an axe. Double Indians—why? Why, because the body happens to possess a right side and a left. "Mother, I have but to remember the look of Union Street and Dock Square and Cornhill, and shall unquestionably know the Town House when I arrive at it, being in no sense too foxed for such, but deliver my mind from that page of Cicero, seeing I hurt him, heedless, heedless continually...."
The lump in his stomach swallowed that speech, bloating. How can you cancel a hurt when there's no way to turn back the clock?
You can't.
It happened. It's over.
"Nempe quod hic alte demissius ille volabat——" Ben retched, but the lump would not come up, and he lost interest in weeping. He supposed he ought to consider this plaguy longing to talk like a drunken man, above all to explain, thwarted by the absence of anyone who might listen. But wasn't that someone lounging by the faint lantern which ought to mark the opening of Union Street? Two in fact, two women, not imaginary. He observed them with great intelligence, their shawls and full skirts—one tall, one short; alone in this region at night, certainly whores in search of business, but never mind. They were animated, and as he approached, Ben found he could explain things in an undertone which need not disturb them.
"Hoy!" Ben thought that was the tall girl; certainly she was the one who delivered that birdy whistle. "Looking for something?"
"Regret," said Ben. "Spent ball, just had some. Otherwise pleased and proud, my word on it."
Both laughed obligingly. The tall girl said: "Phew! Drunk as a lord and him na' but a boy. Feel sorry for 'm, I do."
"Someone else said that a while ago." Ben spoke stiffly, wounded. "No occasion for it. Not worthy of sorrow in sight of God or man."
"Drunk as a lord and running on like a canting parson. It wants 'a wipe its little nose. How they hangin', m' lud?"
But the small plump girl had stepped into Ben's path, and Ben could see her smile was amiable, swimming and shifting in the cold light. She was young, he thought, and pretty. "Sorry. Another time."
"Ay, but sha'n't I walk a bit way with you? You're rotten drunk, boy, and dressed so fine, someone'll rob you."
"No money. Few farthings left."
"A stoodent, Lottie. Look at them books. Oh, do fetch 'em out, m' lud. Read a girl bloody something, do!"
But plump Lottie said: "Leave me walk on a way with you, if you be going by Cornhill." Not waiting for consent, she had his arm, ignoring some under-the-breath comment from her companion, which Ben also preferred to overlook. "That's my way too. Come on—I won't bite you, boy."
"He can read the books," said the tall girl—"between times, like."
"You're kind," Ben said. "I've often marveled how kind people can be, I mean when one's not expecting it. My mother and father were killed at Deerfield. I am, as you say, drunk and not speaking plain."
Lottie was keeping step somehow with his long rambling legs, the other girl forgotten though she had sent after them a little miauling cry. Ben tried to shorten his pace; the legs were riotously disobedient; he could no longer think of them as trustworthy comrades; this was sad. "Drunk as a pig," she said, and giggled warmly. "But you got a sweet face."
"It's merely a kind of good nature," said Ben judicially, disturbed by the sin of vanity. "One can be too good-natured, now that's no lie."
"I'm good-natured too."
"You think a man and woman ought to marry if they have serious 'ligious differences?"
"Ha? I don't know. Walk easy-don't give in to it, boy.... You're to be married?"
"Not fitting. Do you believe in God?"
"Hoy, don't talk so loud! You're drunk."
"Yes.... Can you make up for a hurt when there's no way to turn back the clock?"
"Now it don't do no good to cry. Come on. You can walk."
"Of course I can walk. You don't understand. It can't be done, that's the answer. It happened. It happened in the wilderness. It's over. Goes away from you the way the spring goes and the summer too. You think I could cry when I saw my people killed? God damn it, if we wept for every sufficient reason we'd've all drowned long ago. What did you say, Lottie?"
"Nothing, boy. Come on."
"No, you said something about marrying. Did you not?" He lurched against her and gasped an apology for clumsiness. "That's not even been spoke of, I suppose I'm too young, but she—now pray understand, whatIdon't understand is this: how a man could love a woman so much and nevertheless go and—go and——"
He stopped, embarrassed, realizing that she was undoubtedly a whore, and therefore he could not, without unkindness—through intricate labor of thought he heard her remark: "You'll learn...." The street was a forest, a wilderness where Ben could feel the power of snow on branches suffering for the coming of spring, and in this jungle he was now marvelously ready for the act of love, and had no money. "Come along, love, come along. You live here in Boston?"
"Nay, Roxbury." He watched the pale flame of reason surviving the onslaught of another wave. Was this forest under the sea? A wilderness not of snow-burdened hemlock but of oozing weed, monstrous, ancient. Here monsters lazily glided above dead ships and men unburied, a wilderness where no spring had ever dawned since the beginning of the world. "I don't know where he is, Lottie. The men from Hatfield buried all the dead they could find—later in the day, you understand, after the French were driven out, but I don't know where he lieth or my mother. I'll go back some day, but only if my brother wishes to go with me. Thou hast dove's eyes."
"What?"
"Thou art fair, my love."
"Youaredrunk. I'll see you to Newbury Street if you like—that's your way to Roxbury."
"Most kind. Oh, I wish——"
"You're drunk, and no money—remember? I'm good-natured too, but not that good-natured. Now see can you walk without my hand."
"Of course I can," said Ben with resentment. "Was I not doing so when we met?"
"Not too bloody well," she said, and laughed so cheerfully that he was obliged to join in it, knowing that for a while she still walked on beside him. At a later time, in the sedate quiet of Newbury Street, she was gone. Ben looked back and could still see her, turning a corner, more clearly visible than when she had been near to him. In gentle wonder Ben observed she was slightly hunchbacked, and not young, perhaps not much like the image his mind had drawn of her, that image no more substantial than the shadow of a bird in passage above the leaves in a wilderness of spring.
John Kenny said: "You might as well, Mr. Hibbs. I dare say he was invited to dine at the Jenks', but he'll have no lantern, and I don't like it. Take Rob Grimes with you. Of course, Reuben, you may go with them." Mr. Kenny winced at the pain in his foot which was his common evening companion. "He won't have been invited to stay the night—a house guest would set poor Madam Jenks all of a doodah."
"It's my fault," said Gideon Hibbs.
Mr. Kenny grunted in pain and impatience. "Do you also take that brace of pistols, mine and the one that was George's, they're in my bedroom cabinet. Won't need them, but no harm in carrying them."
Reuben turned from the window, the brightness of the dining room beating down on his mask. "I'll fetch them, sir, and I think I'll wear Ben's knife, seeing he left it behind."
Mr. Kenny relaxed enough to chuckle. "Heh, a small army!—I pity any malefactors in your path. Nay, 'tis only sensible. Well, go as far as the fort anyway. The road's lighted well enough on the Boston side, but I pray you take care passing the Neck. If my God-damned foot wasn't so horrid bad tonight—well, get along, gentlemen! Must you stay for my senile chattering?"
Gnarled, small, ancient and unexcited, Rob Grimes marched in front with the lantern, a pistol jammed in his belt absurd and piratical. Mr. Hibbs carried the other under his flapping great-coat. Eased by physical activity, Reuben's own anxiety lessened: Ben was probably in no trouble, Ben with his wilderness eyes and other senses, and would be sure to relish the comic value of this escort. Presently Reuben was dubiously enjoying the gaunt majesty of Gideon Hibbs in a three-cornered hat, and elaborating comments for Ben's later entertainment.
Mr. Hibbs was not amused. Reuben could feel in him the intense mirthless zeal of a sedentary soul obliged to take the responsibility for something athletic. Maybe, Reuben speculated, a walk in the dark on the Roxbury road did approach the borders of philosophy. He sniffed the east wind, its wild smell of sea-wrack and approaching rain. His hand touched Ben's beloved knife and fell away.
"Said nothing to you, Reuben, about remaining late?"
Mr. Hibbs had asked that twice already. "No, sir."
"'F I may make so bold"—the thick voice of Rob Grimes floated back on a beery chuckle—"some doxy be a-bouncing under him this 'ere moment. Boy's had the look of a stud colt come a year now—blarst it to Jesus, you can't 'old 'em beyant a certain age."
"None of that!" said Mr. Hibbs, who for courtesy would never have spoken so to Grimes in the presence of Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury. Rob grunted, uncrushed. "Reuben, hath Benjamin spoke any word to you lately to suggest a disturbance or over-concern with—hm—with——"
"With the mounting of smocks? No, sir."
"Reuben, I await your apology. I remind you that your favored position doth neither protect nor justify you in assuming the conversation of a roustabout. From evil speech evil conduct. I am waiting."
"I'm sorry, sir," said Reuben, and discovered distractedly that he was, a little. Shocking Mr. Hibbs was too cheap a victory. "I'm truly sorry, Mr. Hibbs. I do speak heedless, and will try to mend."
The great shadow of Gideon Hibbs grunted forgiveness. It almost always did. Uncle John, Reuben thought, is another who forgives much, and why did I never think ofthatbefore? It seemed to him that Uncle John, frail and gouty and gray, was somehow closely with them here in the dark. Some day, he thought, I shall be old—well, the devil with that! Why think now of poor old Reuben Cory?
Because Ben will go where I cannot? Because an old man must regret the flowers he never touched, mornings when he never saw the sun?
But if it is to be medicine—why, then I shall be going where he will not. "If I said, however, that living is a journey"—oh, Mr. Welland, what else could it be, and every morning a misty crossroads?
"Reuben—could Benjamin by chance have overindulged in liquor?"
"I doubt it, sir. Last Monday he did and so did I, but away from home I believe Ben would be careful."
Rob Grimes snorted. Clearing his pug nose, maybe.
"You do reassure me somewhat."
Rob Grimes was calling back: "Mind a puddle here! Och—too bad! Best go about, gentlemen!"
Reuben had already seen what lay under the glow of Rob's lantern, the horrible bulge of the puffed belly, the straightened legs, the obscene pool of blood at the nostrils. "Still warm," said Rob, kneeling, running a hand down the miserable neck, in pity or perhaps only regret at the waste of something useful. "Not of Roxbury," he said. "Know every-each nag in the village. A chapman's likely, some louse-eaten chapman bound he'd drag the last half-mile out of the poor old fart. Shit, look at them ribs! A'n't had a fair meal in months."
"Reuben! What ails thee, boy?"
"Nothing," said Reuben, vomiting.
"Well"—Rob Grimes was ignoring the commotion—"well, the knackers'll be along for 'm in the morning." The old man strode on a short way to wait, his squat back shutting the lantern light from the corpse as he studied the windy night.
"Let me be!" said Reuben, wincing at the sympathy of Mr. Hibbs' arm. "I can't help it. It's the blood, that's all."
"So? Why, only the other day you cut your hand, and bound it up yourself, no-way troubled."
"That was my blood."
"Mm. But——"
"Let me be!Willyou go on, Rob?"
Grimes walked on, maintaining silence for which Reuben loved him. Reuben hurried, wanting to draw nearer that moving island of light.
"Sometimes," said Mr. Hibbs gently, "I imagine I can sense it, when you have fallen to thinking of Deerfield."
"I try not to think of it overmuch."
"That's best of course." Mr. Hibbs sighed, as one whose overture of kindness has been rejected, and Reuben was ashamed. "As you know, I call myself a Seeker, the name I borrow from Mr. Roger Williams whose memory I revere; many would not even call me a good Christian. But I would venture to suggest, Reuben, that God is with you, his ways past finding out."
"You are very kind, sir." And Reuben thought in a continuing astonishment: As a matter of fact, he is.... He wished Rob Grimes would set a stronger pace, but his best intelligence told him that the old man's sturdy plodding was actually not slow, considering the darkness, the need for sheltering the lantern and sending its light from side to side so that they might watch both the right and the left of the road. Maybe they were lost, the three of them, and always had been lost, lost but following some difficult thread of purpose in this windy dark. In a kindlier night they could have found the Great Bear slanting toward the North Star. In a kindlier night there would have been no cause to fear, as in this wilderness Reuben knew he was afraid.
"In my own life," said Hibbs, "I have not seen much of violence. I cannot pretend to know how it was for you three years ago, except I know it to be a thing beyond words of comfort. Nevertheless allow me to say, Reuben, that your life, yours and Benjamin's, is yet at the spring."
Rob Grimes called: "Something ahead! I heard——"
The noise floated to them faintly, puzzling in the wind, a hallooing with an insane note of cheerfulness. Reuben felt a scattering coldness across his cheek—rain, or sea-scud torn by the east wind from the surface of Gallows Bay. Grimes mumbled: "Can't hear it now——"
"Hush!" said Reuben savagely. Then: "It's to the left."
"You mean the marshes, boy?"
"Yes. Give me the light, old man!" Grimes yielded it without a murmur, and Reuben ran, unthinking, sure-footed, avoiding the hummocks and the marshy hollows, shouting: "Where are you? Where are you?" Then he could see his brother fifty feet away, upright in grotesque dignity on a small sodden peninsula of land not much broader than the spread of his feet. Between him and Reuben was a muttering of wind-tormented marsh water, and a smooth patch of featureless gray unaffected by the wind. Ben took a wavering step. "Don't move, you damn fool! Look down!"
"'M a damn fool," said Ben agreeably, and swayed back from the quicksand, grinning at Reuben's light. "Fact 'm drunk."
Reuben laughed. "That I know. Don't move your feet. Stay as you are till I come to you." Laughing still, he picked his way along the edge of the water and the foulness, to the narrow strip of solid ground that Ben's luck had found for him in the dark. "Pee-yew!" said Reuben, and clutched a handful of Ben's shirt. "With such a breath why walk? Why not float, friend?"
"Was trying to. Was trying to find Polaris. Too dark. Besides I'm in a 'culiar condition."
"Lean on me. Firm ground here."
"Wherever thou art."
"I shall remember that, and thou wilt forget it."
"I forget nothing, Reuben. Iwastrying to find Polaris."
"Well, a'n't it the nature of the children of Adam to hunt for the North Star on a cloudy night?"
"Very sound. One of thine evenings. Yaphoo!"
"All evenings are mine. But don't weep."
"I'm laughing, boy. A'n't I? Oh, Ru, I was so confused. I thought—I certainly thought——"
"What, Ben?"
"I thought it was wilderness."
"That wouldn't make thee afeared. That wouldn't make thee weep."
"I thought everything was wilderness."
"Well, what if it is?"
In the sunlight on Reuben's bed sat two male images, the smaller one all orange-gold, the larger cross-legged and brighter than rippling gold and ivory, with brown hair, and a heartless voice saying: "This I was waiting to observe. Note, Mr. Eccles, the motions of the creature's head, how they creak. Are these actual sounds of pain, or only noises of some mechanism which creates an illusion of animation?"
"Alas!" said Ben. "I am not fit to rise and murder you—yet."
"It speaks. Note that, Eccles. Note the bleared eyes, how obscene! Will you go to the kitchen and fetch a pot of coffee for it?" Mr. Eccles yawned and filed his yellow paws. "Unfeeling animal! Have you no pity? MustIwait on the needs of this moaning monster?"
"Some day whenyoufeel like dawn on the battlefield, I'll stand on your stomach and read aloud every word ofMagnalia Christi Americana."
"You heard that, Eccles?—how it appeals to my humanity and in the same breath threatens my life? I must act." Ben watched the golden image rise, slip on a dressing-gown, and stand over him in the enormous light. "Puh, what a breath even now!" said Reuben, and stooped suddenly to kiss his forehead, and vanished out of the room.
Moving his head with care, Ben met the contemplation of Mr. Eccles, who had nothing to offer. Uncle John was accustomed to explain that the cat derived his name from a merchant Levi Eccles of Plymouth who looked and behaved just like him. But to the boys privately, after he had come to know them a little, the old man admitted this was anex post factoinvention. He took them into his study and opened his much-worn Bible; over Reuben's shoulder Ben had read familiar words:For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. Ecclesiastes iii: 19.
Reuben was displaying a different mood altogether when he returned with a pot of the blessed stuff—quiet and no longer much amused, or at least not showing it. "Drink deep, sufferer, and tell all—if you wish."
The coffee was a benediction; so long as The Head did not move suddenly, all might be well. "Oh, I ran into Mr. Shawn at Uncle John's wharf—O my God! Uncle John! Why, he must have thought——"
Reuben shook his head casually. "Beyond a broad statement to the effect that boys will be boys, for the which he claimed no great measure of originality, I saw no sign of severe displeasure. When he insisted on helping me remove your smelly boots, he—chuckled: this I affirm. You may get a few instructions this morning, but without pain. Proceed."
"Oh—a few drinks with Shawn—dinner at a tavern—I don't seem to remember all of it." But he did.
Reuben studied his finger tip that was scratching Mr. Eccles' chin. "You brought home some books. Over there on your dresser."
"They're for you."
"What!" Reuben was a long time at the dresser, his back turned, his hands on the books not turning the pages. "Ben—how did you know?"
"I guessed right, then?"
"Yes! Yes, but I—why, I only gabbled. I don't see how——"
"You did. Came to me later, what you must mean. Is it a call?"
Eyes wet, face shining and troubled and amazed, Reuben turned to him and started once or twice to speak, then said only: "Yes."
"You can—oh, damn my head!—you can be certain?"
"I'm—certain. I did go to see Mr. Welland again yesterday. He spoke of an apprenticeship."
"Oh.... Well—well, good, if it's what you wish. What about Harvard, Ru?"
"I don't know." Reuben sat on the floor by Ben's bed, a motion of effortless grace that made Ben's head throb to watch it. "I must speak to Uncle John of course. Maybe I can go to the college and study with Mr. Welland at the same time. There'll be the summers."
Ben groped at it uneasily, with some small confusion of envy. "Pills—pills and sick people and——"
Reuben shook his head. "It's not like that, Ben. I mean, that is only one part of it, and for the rest—I can't explain it because I don't know enough, but of a sudden, after a long time of not knowing what I desired, there is this, and I do seem to be certain."
"But for myself, I've not found it."
"You will," said Reuben quickly. "It'll come to you, as it has—as I know it has to me." He reached for Ben's empty cup and poured a drink for himself, sitting cross-legged, intent, a small man with a boy's face. "Ben, I think—so far as I can explain it, I think it's a desire to know."
"To know?"
"About human creatures. How they're made, why they feel, think, suffer, act as they do. I wish...." His face tightened in distress, and Ben, with some insight, knew it was merely the distress of a search for communication among inadequate slippery words.
"But medicine—that's healing the sick. That's going about——"
"It's that, and that I accept, that I desire too, but it's more, Ben, it's study. Mr. Welland says a doctor must remain a student or die on his feet. And the study is not only sickness, remedies, surgery, the study is human beings—men, women, children, in all their ways—andthatI desire." He smiled suddenly, vulnerably, holding up his little finger. "There are creatures so tiny—Mr. Welland showed me a book, theMicrographia—so tiny there might be hundreds, nay thousands of them there on the space of my little fingernail. Too small to see without the lens, but living things, Ben—separate living beings, no fancy at all but the discovery of sober men—and he says, Mr. Welland says, why mayn't these animalculae have something to do with the mysteries of disease? They've been found everywhere—pond water, earth, the surface of the skin. Why mayn't they enter us sometimes, causing the ills we can't explain? It's a speculation, Mr. Welland says—he found it not in the books, only had the thought, and now and then (he said himself) from such thoughts come discoveries. I must—know," said Reuben. He jumped up and crossed the room swiftly to examine the books again. "One thing I know: you wasn't drunk when you bought these."
"No, I didn't drink until supper at the tavern, and then later."
"Later?"
"Well, Mr. Shawn took me to a—place. A house, Ru—one of those."
"Oh?..." Ben wondered why he had been moved to speak of it at all: there was no need. But even now, aware of something tight and painful in Reuben's silence, he felt and suppressed a continuing impulse to brag, to invent for Reuben a story of what never happened. "Was it—any good, Ben?"
"I can't say it was. I think I'd had too much ale, and then something more there—buttered rum. That was my undoing." His laughter sounded to himself feeble and unwelcome.
"You mean nothing happened?"
"Nothing much.... No, damn it, nothing—I spilled at the gates. I think maybe I didn't really wish to go. Mr. Shawn——"
Reuben's words raced and ran together: "Well, the devil fly off with your friend Shawn, and couldn't the son of a bitch stand by you and you so drunk? Do you know you was stepping direct for that quicksand?"
"I—was?"
"We might have gone down in it."
"Well—wait, Ru! It was no fault of Shawn. I left him at the house. He was still with his wench when I was ready to go, and some-way I didn't wish to see him then, so I came off alone."
"Oh." His face still averted, his thin hands motionless on the books, Reuben muttered: "Sorry, Ben. The cork popped out of the bottle and I spattered. My regrets." He started getting dressed, and Ben knew his chatter was mainly for his own benefit: "Beware the lightning after breakfast—Pontifex is not wholly pleased with our Benjamin, and will be summoning the cohorts of Ovid, hisTristia; Ramus, hisLogic; Cicero, his honorificabilitudinitatibus."
"Ow-ooh!"
"What—coach wheels?"
"I thought that was my head."
"No," said Reuben, and flung open the window. "Something's afoot."
"If on wheels, how should it be—ow! Shut that arctic window, you bloody worm!" But as Ben tried to creep under the covers, Reuben hauled a corner of them over his shoulder and marched to the door with it, his good humor restored, peeling Ben raw to the April breeze. He wadded the bedclothes into a spherical snarl out of Ben's reach, heaved that into the closet, barked in some satisfaction, and ran downstairs. Ben could plainly make out the squeak and rattle of coach wheels from the driveway before the house. He leaped for his clothes—unwisely, considering his head—and paused to reflect on the uses of sobriety.
The fat horses were lathered, blowing in relief at the halt. From the parlor window Reuben saw the girl alight before the coachman's hand could aid her, a square small maiden in a hurry. As Kate Dobson opened the door he heard fright, determination and embarrassment in the throaty voice: "I must speak with Mr. Kenny—'tis most urgent."
Kate was fluttering. "He's at breakfast, my dear."
Reuben intervened, startled as she abruptly swung to him, a miniature whirlwind with sea-blue eyes. Some blurred yellowish phenomenon passed her feet—a dog apparently, not relevant unless Mr. Eccles should choose that moment to come downstairs. "I'll take you to him," Reuben said, and Kate relaxed at the authority of a man in the house.
"You are Mr. Cory's brother."
"Madam, the charge is well founded."
"This," said Charity, "is no time for schoolboy levity."
"Ow-ooh!" said Reuben, and stood to attention by the dining-room doorway as Charity passed, and the dog. In a woolgathering way, the animal acknowledged Reuben's feet, but had no time for them. It was mere carelessness, not sin, that made Reuben leave the door open as he followed Charity with all the meekness of Sultan.
Pleased and then alarmed, Mr. Kenny jumped up, winced at his bad foot and clutched the table-edge. "Charity, my dear, what lucky wind——"
"Sir, Faith said I'd best be the one to bring word, seeing Mama is prostrated and—and so—so I——" she lapsed into stuttering confusion and stamped her foot in rage at her own behavior.
"Breathe slow, my dear," said the old man, no longer smiling. "Count to four, my dear, then to eight by twos. Now: two, four, six——"
"Eight, ten, twelve," said Charity, and shuddered. "Pray don't be prostrated, Mr. Kenny, the way Mama said you was sure to be. I'd not know what to do."
"Now sit thee down," said John Kenny. "I shall undertake not to be prostrated, and a'n't thy bonnet-strings a little tight?"
Standing by her chair, Reuben briefly recalled the sensation of living as a pigmy in a world of giants. "Mama saith, never no such thing happened here in all her time. My father—he—well, when they brought the news he heard something and came downstairs, but he—but he...."
Reuben noticed her fists pressing on the table. On impulse he lifted one of them. "Allow me," said Reuben, urging the fingers to open and relax. They did so, as Charity stared up at him in a trance of observation. He patted the hand and set it back on the table. "I think, Charity, my Uncle John would prefer not to have bad news broken gently. Am I right, sir? Better to hear it quick and plain?"
"Much better." John Kenny spoke absently, watching him and not Charity, who would have accomplished her errand then, Reuben guessed, but hell broke loose.
Reuben glimpsed the preliminary tableau—Sultan in the doorway, frozen in unbelieving horror at a ball of golden evil which advanced on stiff legs directly toward his nose. Reuben had time to lay a private wager entirely in favor of Mr. Eccles, but was too late for anything else—the golden ball rose up straight, reversed itself in mid-air, and dropped on Sultan's back with the ineluctable certainty of the Puritan Hell.
"Oh!" Charity cried. "Oh, the horrid beast!" She jumped up on her chair, maybe to see better. "Sultan, stop it!"
Sultan would have loved to, if he could. John Kenny swung up his aging feet as the storm swept by.
Reuben followed.
"Sultan!" Charity wailed. "Come here this instant! Sultan, shame! Abusing that poor cat!"
Mr. Kenny lifted his feet again.
Reuben followed.
A chair toppled over. If Sultan had nourished any hopes at all, they had centered around that chair. He might, like Milton's Lucifer, have had none—Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell....Reuben followed, dimly aware of his brother in the doorway and Kate Dobson behind him, both shouting encouragement. Uncle John seemed rather happy too, but was preparing to lift his feet a third time. Reuben observed that everyone, in fact, was laughing except himself, and he would too if he could onlygaina little.... At last he was able to swoop down and grasp the loose skin of a rigid yellow neck. He hoisted it; Sultan shot away from under it. A good deal of Sultan's hair came up on the claws, but the essential dog was then able to flee under Charity's chair and leave all the rest to the judgment of history.
Reuben secured Mr. Eccles' threshing hind legs and bore him to the kitchen door. Ben dived to open it for him, doubled over and hooting but aware of the flashing forepaws.
"Ben!" said Mr. Kenny—"Ben, you a'n't got sea-room. You, Reuben, I mean Mr. Cory, do you tack a mite to la'board—la'board, sir! There—now, Ben, now you can cross his bow."
"'Sbody!" said Kate. "I wouldn't trade 'im for a mastiff!"
"Best not leave him alone out there, Kate," said Mr. Kenny. "You hear that?" Reuben had flung Mr. Eccles into the kitchen and closed the door just in time, but he could be heard marching up and down, blaspheming. "He's lonely, the little thing."
Kate bounced away whooping. Mr. Kenny wiped his eyes and finished a buttered bun. "I suppose," said Reuben, "it happens to the best of dogs."
"Why," said Charity, "he was overtaken by surprise."
"Of course he was," said Mr. Kenny. "Come, Sultan! Come here, boy, good boy!" Mr. Kenny chirped, but though Sultan was willing to explain everything in a long undertone, he was not at the moment coming anywhere, for anyone.
Charity exploded in fresh cries. "I can't stop laughing!" she wept, and dropped her head on the table. "I can'tstopit!" Mr. Kenny bent over her, concerned; her laughter had gone shrill and sick. "Dreadful news, and I—Ican't stop laughing! Help!"
For Reuben, the worst of Mr. Eccles' dangerous writhing had not obscured a second's glimpse of Charity in the moment when she discovered that Ben was in the room. Under cover of her wailing laughter he muttered in Ben's ear: "Can't you see she loves you? Do something!"
He knew Ben did not quite understand nor believe it, but Ben took an uncertain step toward the chair where Charity struggled with the demons of her laughter, and that was enough. Charity flung herself at him. Reuben saw his brother's arms close around her with a natural kindness, and heard him say: "Now, now! What's the matter, Mistress Charity?"
"Cousin Jan—Mr. Dyckman." She spoke quietly into Ben's shirt, all laughter spent.
"Dyckman?" John Kenny came to them, and touched her shoulder lightly, as if it might burn him. "What of Mr. Dyckman, my dear?"
"He is dead."
"Dead! But——"
Her cheek over Ben's heart, Charity was able now to deliver plainly and bleakly the words she must have rehearsed a dozen times during the journey in the coach. "The men of the watch discovered him in an alley off Ship Street a little before dawn. Faith bade me take the coach, seeing you might wish to return in it with me. Our servant Clarissa is seeing to the house while Faith cares for Mama, so—none to send but me."
"Of course, my dear," said Mr. Kenny vacantly. "I'll go with thee at once." Mr. Hibbs had come down for breakfast, but stood apart gloomily, apparently not presuming to hope that anyone would explain matters to him. "I'll go with thee, and—and my two sons."
"I was to say, sir, that the Constable Mr. Derry hath undertook to be at your office at the warehouse this forenoon, and will summon back the men of the Select Watch if you wish to question them."
"Mr. Derry?—the watch? What art thou saying, Charity? Mr. Dyckman was murdered?"
"I alway doeverythingwrong!" Charity mourned, but Ben patted her shoulder and she quieted again. "Yes, and they said, sir, his wallet was gone—some footpad of the water front, but Mama will have it that it was the French. She will have it that Frenchmen are a-prowl in the streets of our neighborhood seeking opportunity to murder my father and herself. Could—could it be so?"
"It could not," said Mr. Kenny, and managed a wavering laugh. "Your mother is fanciful."
"She speaks of selling our Clarissa, and away from Boston, for that Clarissa was bred and born in Guadeloupe."
John Kenny snorted; Reuben hoped he was recovering his firmness. "I trust Mr. Jenks will forbid any such thing—meaning no disrespect to your mother, Charity."
Charity sighed, burrowing her nose deeper. Reuben supposed that for her the worst was over. She went on in a brittle but steady monotone: "Cousin Jan—Mr. Dyckman was—they said he was yet alive when he was found, and must have been lying there untended for many hours, for blood was dry on his garments."
"Alive? Could he speak then?"
"He told the watch his name. And then begged that he might speak with my father, and said somewhat more of justice being done, and they said he commended his soul unto God, and there was some other word, but not clear, and when they would lift him to carry him the blood came up in his mouth, they said, and he choked, and died. He was stabbed, they said, stabbed in the back, stabbed in a dozen places."
Constable Malachi Derry, a sad man with excellent muscle disguised by a concave chest, a willowy neck and a jaw like a pick-axe, commonly described himself as slow to wrath, but he could be angry, and Ben saw that he was now, as he drooped on a three-legged stool in Mr. Kenny's office and tried to find space for surplus leg where the uncompromising feet of Captain Peter Jenks allowed not another inch of it and would not budge. Mr. Derry was a ship chandler by trade. Chosen for the thankless position of constable, he had done his level New England best to wriggle out of it, until informed by Governor Dudley himself that he would serve, or else pay a fine of not less than ten pounds, possibly more. Faced with that, Mr. Derry did the next best thing—tried to be a good constable.
It came hard, leaving him scant time for his rightful labors. He must waste hours in the courts, bustle about serving warrants, seeing to the daytime peace of his district, while the chandlery went to ruin. On the Sabbath, engaged in preventing others from ungodliness, how could he find proper time to look to his own soul? The supplementary emoluments, in view of the damage to his trade, were dem'd low. Besides, the work was dangerous. Still trying to find room for his legs, he rumbled on to a peroration: "I was compelled, Mr. Kenny, to say this morning to Madam Dyckman herself, poor woman: 'We do what we may, more we cannot.' I have heard Judge Sewall himself declare that disorder increaseth continually, but doth the power of my office increase also? Not at all, sir, the while this very air of the water front, as it were, spawns evildoers, the cutthroat, the footpad, the blasphemer, the piratically inclined—mostly foreigners, you understand."
"I understand," said John Kenny, "that you hold out small hope of discovering the ruffian who hath murdered the mate of my ketchArtemisand so taken from me and my captain a good friend."
Captain Jenks slammed his fist down on his knee and said nothing. To Ben this morning he was almost unrecognizable as the same man who had come ashore in a flood of sunlight. His whole broad face was darkly flushed, the red skin raddled with a thousand lines. When his thick hands were not jumping like those of an old man with the palsy, a fine tremor possessed them. Bags hung like flabby udders below his bloodshot blue eyes, and the eyes were cold with wrath and confusion: a man goaded by much pain, unable to understand the source of it; a stricken leviathan unable to see the harpoon that has pierced it.
"That's true," said Mr. Derry—"small hope, I fear. You understand, sir, a cobblestone takes no footprint, a knife-blade leaves no signature. We know he was scurvily set upon, robbed, slain. But are you aware, sir, there may be as many as two or three hundred evil livers in and about the city who might have done this, and for no reason but the scent of whatever money or goods he had upon him?"
"Well..." Mr. Kenny rested his head on his shriveled hands. Reuben had drawn up a chair to sit by him at the desk, unbidden except by a silent glance that Ben had seen. Lounging across the room, Ben felt the coolness of the light, always dusty in this small office, pouring over their faces, the old man and the boy, the sick man and the well-meaning officer of the law. The stirring of pain within himself was so vague he could not know whether it was a foolish jealousy because Uncle John had sent that message to Reuben and not to him, or merely that unreasonable stab of loneliness which may assail any person at certain times. "Well," said Mr. Kenny, "I see no profit in summoning the watch. I take it, Mr. Derry, you've told us everything Mr. Dyckman was able to say before he died?"
"I think so, sir. Sadly little, seeing he was in the last extremity. He spoke his name, he begged to be taken to Captain Jenks. All of the men, sir, heard him say: 'God's will be done!' And as they were endeavoring to lift him, Mr. Dyckman did speak some word of his wife and children, but the men could scarce hear it, and that was all."
Ben fidgeted. He knew he should have spoken during the journey from Roxbury; Charity's distracted presence had restrained him. When they left her at home and the Captain took her place in the coach, certainly he ought to have spoken. Captain Jenks had made a difficult and vaguely courageous thing of the journey from the house steps to the coach, winning each step like an old man, his face rigid, red and terrible. Waiting in the coach and looking the other way, Uncle John had murmured to Ben: "Don't offer your hand to aid him into the seat." And once the Captain was installed there, Ben had barely room to breathe, let alone speak. But now in the slightly less crowded office he managed to blurt out: "Uncle John...."
The old man looked up at him dimly, and Reuben searched him with a gaze of intentness like a sword. Malachi Derry wheeled about to observe him with that kind of tight patience that operates like a thumb in the eye. Captain Jenks alone paid him no attention; earlier he had acknowledged Ben's existence with a grunt, Reuben's not at all.
"Yes, Ben?" said Uncle John.
"I saw Mr. Dyckman yesterday evening. I ought to have spoke sooner, but didn't wish to distress little Charity further." They simply waited; even Captain Jenks was looking at him now, his attention caught perhaps by Charity's name. "I met Mr. Shawn by chance, and he seemed to wish my company, so we went to dine at—I think the Lion is the name of it, a tavern on Ship Street."
"Well, young man," said Mr. Derry, "I know the place, the which——"
Jenks interrupted as if Derry were a plaguy noise in the street: "Shawn? Who a devil's name is Shawn?"
Mr. Kenny said rather sharply: "I know him, Peter. Let the boy tell it. Why—you met Mr. Shawn yourself, I remember, the afternoon you came ashore. He was with us at the wharf."
"Oh, that—yah." Jenks rubbed his face wearily and subsided.
"Go on, Ben."
"Well, sir, only that Mr. Dyckman came to that tavern while we were there, and was drinking rum with the new bosun Tom Ball, and—had evidently been drinking already for some time. He was very foxed."
"Jan Dyckman? Are you certain, Ben?"
"Of course, sir. Mr. Shawn noticed it too. I had the thought he might wish me to introduce him to Mr. Dyckman, but Mr. Shawn said nay, let it be another time, for Mr. Dyckman was not himself. In fact, Uncle John, he looked directly at me without recognition, though he knows me well enough. Knew me, I suppose I must say."
Captain Jenks was staring down into his hands as if wondering why they were empty. To them he said ponderously: "Jan seldom drank, and when he did could always hold his liquor like a man. Shit, I don't believe it."
"Peter, my boy Benjamin is not an inventor of tales."
"Tell him," said Jenks—Ben might have been in Roxbury—"tell him to spend more time with the futtering books, and less with silver-tongued bloody idlers and Irish at that."
"Mr. Jenks"—that was Reuben, an ugly softness such as Ben had never before heard in his light adolescent baritone—"you are doing an injustice, to my brother certainly, and perhaps to Mr. Shawn."
Jenks turned slowly to examine him, as one who wished to ask: Who a devil's name are you? Beside Reuben's cold furious face was the waiting quiet of Mr. Kenny. The Captain's wrath appeared to fade, a fire he could not be troubled to sustain. "D'you tell me the same, John?"
"I do."
"Then I am sorry, and will retract what I said, and hope no offense was taken."
"None, sir," said Ben quickly, inwardly very greatly offended; but Peter Jenks was Faith's father, and was at present (as Uncle John would have said) not his own man.
Mr. Derry, evidently fatigued from the labor of saying nothing, now mildly and respectfully asked: "Had you more to tell, Mr. Cory?"
"There was one thing," said Ben, but stopped at a knocking on the office door, and after a nod from Uncle John opened it.
Daniel Shawn was very clean, fresh, brisk. He smiled at Ben, not with any smirk of conspiracy or other reminder of the night, but openly and amiably. "Good morning, Ben—but it's not the good morning, now that's no lie." He turned at once to Mr. Kenny. "Sir, don't be slow to tell me if I intrude. I heard, sir—the water front is talking of nothing else the day. I wished to say, if there be anything I might do, I owe you some service, Mr. Kenny, if only for your kindness and hospitality the other night, and you may call on me for anything it's in my power to do at all."
"That's kind," said Mr. Kenny vaguely.
Mr. Derry got his legs loose at last, and moved to lean against the door, by that rambling action somehow making them all his prisoners of the moment. The room had been crowded before—Captain Jenks made any closed space seem so; now, with Daniel Shawn lean and large in his green coat, and Mr. Derry obscurely grown in stature, the little place was stifling as a shut box. "Who are you, sir?"
"Daniel Shawn, seaman. And you?"
"I am Malachi Derry, and Constable. Your name was mentioned but now, Mr. Shawn. I understand you dined yesterday evening with Mr. Cory here, at the Lion Tavern on Ship Street?"
"Oh, I did that," said Mr. Shawn lightly. "And later, Mr. Kenny, I feared maybe I had presumed, but sir, the boy and I were both at a loose end, you might say, and most pleasant conversation we had, and no harm in it, I hope?"
"Oh, none," said John Kenny, groping at something in his mind. "I wish Ben might have let me know, but that's unreasonable of me, for I don't know how he could, seeing I left early for Roxbury. Ben, you had something more to tell?"
"Yes, and I'm glad Mr. Shawn is here, for he'll remember it too. There was a man seated at the back of the tavern when Mr. Shawn and I went in, a total stranger, a one-eyed man I'd know again if I saw him, no matter how far away, and—oh, it can't be important, only a feeling I had——"
"Now I will judge of that," said Malachi Derry, and came alive, leaning away from the door with the sudden monstrous tension of a cat who has just sighted a wriggle in the grass. "A one-eyed man?"
"Ay, a black patch, over the left eye. And the only reason I mention him, sir, is that when Mr. Dyckman and Ball left the place, this man rose at once and followed them out, but until then he had been sitting idle with the flies gathered on his empty trencher, and when I first saw him I had a feeling that he was—oh, waiting for something."
Captain Jenks shook his head in grim disgust.
"The left eye, Mr. Cory? You are certain?"
"Yes, Mr. Derry, the left eye. He was—not the common sort. I'd know him again, anywhere. Shabby clothes, black, patched. Tall, thin, a gray diagonal scar across the back of his right hand, and on his face a mad fixed smile such as I never saw on any man before."
"Oh, come!" said Captain Jenks. "May we not have the precise height of this hobgoblin, in inches and fractions?"
John Kenny said carefully: "Mr. Derry, I have sometimes walked with Ben in the woods. Though an old man, I did not know until then how much the human eye can grasp." Ben warmed within; he saw Reuben smile as if the small triumph were his own. "You may take it, Mr. Derry, it was the left eye, and with this pencil—catch, Ben!—he can draw you an accurate sketch of the diagonal scar."
"No need," said Mr. Derry softly, examining the ceiling, a little relaxed. "I happen to know of mine own knowledge, the description is just." His gaze wandered here and there, and settled on Daniel Shawn. "Did you also see this man?"
Shawn considered with gravity. "I think I noticed some such person when we entered. I recall I sat facing the front of the tavern. I didn't notice him leaving, but if it's Beneen says he left soon after Mr. Dyckman, then sure he did."
"But," said Ben—"oh, I remember. When he passed our table, Mr. Shawn, you'd just then leaned to the fireplace, and likely never saw him. One other thing I remember, Mr. Derry—nay, but it was only a feeling of mine, and of no importance——"
"Tell me anyway," said the Constable.
"Why, only that when he passed our table, he looked at me, just one quick look from his one eye, and—I can't explain this, Mr. Derry. He did nothing, you understand, only glanced at me and likely with no thought for me at all, and yet I felt as if he'd spat in my face."
"Ay, that," said Constable Derry as if he found nothing strange in it at all, and Ben looked down at the little pencil in his fingers, wondering why Daniel Shawn should suddenly be angry with him. Not anger perhaps; only something probingly cold and measuring in the large blue eyes. It could not really be so, Ben thought. Or if it was so, then it meant that Shawn was hurt or offended because Ben had run away without waiting for him from Mistress Gundy's house....
Reuben watched the glittery ink-blots of Mr. Derry's little brown eyes; heavy brows above them danced for Reuben's troubled amusement like busy moths. "Another name was mentioned—a new bosun, Tom Ball—will that mean bosun of your ketchArtemis, Mr. Kenny? And could you or the Captain tell me anything of him?"
"I've met him only to shake hands. Peter?"
"Good sailor," said Captain Jenks thickly. "Obeys orders, works hard, keeps his mouth shut—more'n that I never ask of my men."
Except, Reuben thought, their souls and their lives. But how can a captain demand less than that even if he would? Reuben tried to put the thought away, and succeeded, because now every nerve of observation in him had grown taut to the edge of agony, and the focal point was not Captain Jenks. Something in this crowded room was wrong as a rattlesnake in a flower bed. It became a severe effort not to look toward the blue eyes of Daniel Shawn. Reuben forced his attention back to what the Constable was saying—something more about Tom Ball, maybe not important. "Another thing, Mr. Kenny, and I'll be on my way. Have you ever heard tell of one named Jack Marsh, or some say it should be Judah Marsh, or Judas?"
"Why, that name—it doth echo somewhere....
"Think back, sir, ten or eleven years. Eleven it is—'96. An occasion when a certain Captain Avery, or Every, alias Bridgeman and sometimes called Long Ben, was allowed to enter Boston, and that openly, to dicker for the sale of his plunder gotten under the black flag. To the great scandal, I must say, of any man who can tell a privateer from a gallows-bird, but so it was, Mr. Stoughton being acting Governor."
Mr. Kenny peered down his nose with the lopsided half of a smile, perhaps suspecting Mr. Derry of humorous intent in linking holy Stoughton with dreadful Avery. Malachi Derry appeared quite innocent. "Mph, yes, and m'lord Bellomont as Governor had his Captain Kidd, yes yes. Of course, Mr. Derry, I remember Avery, as who would not?"
"We suffered much odious brawling in the town by Avery's men."
"I recall it."
"One of them, known then as Judah or Judas Marsh, did have his left eye gouged out in a brush with—umph—some of the ruder element." A glint in the brown eyes suggested he might not be wholly innocent after all. "It happened near my establishment, though I didn't witness it."
"And I recall the roustabout who blinded him was flogged, and Marsh—(but wasn't it March, Mr. Derry?)—nursed the wound at the Alms House as an idle, drunken and disorderly person."
"And escaped."
"Oh?—that I'd forgotten. So many have done so, and we still continue to use the Alms House, damn the thing, because the House of Correction is not in fit posture to restrain ailing rats. And by the way, Constable, if the Meeting shall ever instruct the Selectmen and Justices in this particular, I predict nothing will come of it. Go on, pray."
"Amen, sir. Yes, Marsh escaped after Captain Avery had gone his way. Later Marsh was seen, oh, here and there—Plymouth, Salem Village—alway with an evil reputation. And disappeared—for good, it was thought—about the time we began to hear tell of John Quelch. A month ago I received intelligence from a worthy man of my acquaintance at Gloucester, who is a justice of the peace and a man of substance." Mr. Derry swelled comfortably and brushed lint from his jacket, applying the pressure of a genial silence.
John Kenny said reminiscently: "I was obliged to serve a year once as constable, at Roxbury—mph—must confess that lieth further in the past than 1696. Onerous occupation." He smiled like a December thaw. Mr. Derry looked politely attentive and slightly sulky. Mr. Kenny sighed and obliged: "You heard, from your friend at Gloucester—?"
"I heard that this man Marsh—sometimes his name did appear as March, it's all one—had been hanging about there recent, seeking a berth with one of the fishing vessels, but because of his foul conversation and ugly habit, none would have him. My informant advised me that Marsh had left, possibly for Boston, and recommended I be watchful, seeing trouble follows this man as stink follows a polecat. Marsh, I hear, is quick with a knife, and nowadays they do call him Smiling Jack. I believe, sir, that thanks to this timely aid from Mr. Cory, we may be able to conclude the grievous happening of last night by persuading Mister Marsh to dance without benefit of a floor."
"Still, what do we know, man?" Mr. Kenny bleakly asked. "Item, he left the tavern when Dyckman did. Any man might have done so for any of a dozen innocent reasons."
Mr. Derry smiled slowly, reached in the air for an imaginary throat, twisted it, wiped his hand lingeringly on his breeches. "Mr. Kenny, if Marsh be found anywhere in the town, I can detain and question him. Why, I dare say he'll be found before Mr. Dyckman must be buried. He shall be brought before the body, and does any man doubt the wounds will bleed?"
"May I be there!" said Captain Jenks to his tremendous hands.
Reuben felt a new sort of sternness in his great-uncle as the small old man leaned far over the desk. "Peter." He waited until the Captain turned to look at him. "Peter, I will not delay the sailing ofArtemis. When she hath her cargo and her complement, and the tide is right, she'll go, sir, and landside justice no concern of hers."
"Well, John—-" Captain Jenks sighed cavernously. "Well, John...." For the dozenth time he rubbed at his flushed face as if cobwebs clung to it; his gaze wandered until it met Constable Derry's, and then he spoke more or less as to a friend: "Find him soon, Constable."
Daniel Shawn had stepped to the window, a little behind Mr. Kenny. Reuben could see him, his gaunt and handsome face staring away through the smeary glass. "It's the hard thing such a man as Mr. Dyckman should die, and for what? The poor scrap of money he may have had with him—what's money beside a man's life, Mother of God?"
Nobody answered him. To the Captain Mr. Derry said: "I expect to find him soon enough, and you have the right to be present when he's examined. You understand, sir, there'll be no interference with the law, no cheating of the gallows, for except I be strangely deluded, the man will hang." Malachi Derry bowed to the room at large and moved to the door on the balls of his feet.
"And that no great loss, I suppose," said Mr. Kenny. A tumbling of disorderly papers on the desk had threatened to submerge his gold-headed cane. He rescued it and rubbed the handle, that was shaped into an elfin woman's leg and thigh, against the dry sagging skin beneath his jaw. "But Jan will still be dead."
Stooping for a passage of the doorway, Mr. Derry paused to stare in disapproval. "Mr. Kenny, surely you, sir, will not display a froward heart before the will of the Lord? We are insects before his footstool: we do what we may, more we cannot. Is it for us to question the judgment? Did not your friend himself commend his soul to God? He said: 'God's will be done!' Amen."
"I am sure he said it." Mr. Kenny gazed at the Constable politely. "Mr. Dyckman was a Lutheran, by the way. If you find Marsh, and if his guilt be proven on him, I shall not protest his being hanged, or hanged, drawn and quartered since that ever pleaseth the multitude, and left on the handiest gallows Boston can provide, as a plain apodeixis"—Mr. Derry winced and looked largely wise—"a veritable indicium of human justice. Good morning, Mr. Derry."
Reuben heard through the opened door into the warehouse the boom of rolling barrels, thud of boxes, metallic clang of large voices echoing back from barren walls.Artemiswas filling her hold with a cargo of salt cod for Bridgetown in Barbados. Word of the death had occasioned a pause in the clamor earlier in the morning; a short one: commerce and the seasons don't wait. The warehouse, Reuben thought, was a roaring djinn, the ships its only masters; it could pause in its thundering activity if someone died, as a giant might hesitate at the squeak of something under his foot, but not for long. Within him a cool voice remarked that a simile was a mischancy nag to ride—ride him easy.... He saw Ben lean down, returning that pencil to the desk, and Ben was evidently doing battle with some private unease. It was necessary, Reuben reflected with some coolness of his own, to talk with Ben as soon as they could be alone together, if only to learn what it was about yesterday evening that Ben had not told.... Outside, Mr. Derry's voice rumbled: "Yes, Mr. Eames, he's within, but engaged."