Wilderness of Spring Part 21

"Didn't I _say_ it had an _a_ into it? Think of that! Ah, well...."

Ben saw she was close to tears. Kate wept easily at many things trifling and great; this was no trifle. What she referred to was a labor of years, a sampler intended (some day) for the wall of Mr. Kenny's study.

For all Ben knew it might have been started before he was born. Kate herself couldn't say when she began it, as she couldn't say for sure how old she was, or what year it was she came as a redemptioner from England. To Kate all the past telescoped in a half-reality, and memories overflowing in her talk could seldom be closely tied to conventional mileposts of time. Ben had seen the incomplete sampler, shyly unfolded from a workbasket at times when Mr. Kenny was away in the city. The border was almost done, she said. From the bottom on either side rose branches, ivy idealized, st.i.tched in springtime greens with immense pains and skill; at the top the branches met, interlocking as leaves in nature do, contending but sharing sunlight. That part, she claimed, was easy--why, you just st.i.tched it: so, and so. But the motto caused her endless grief, since she had never been taught to write or read. She knew the alphabet; with desperate trouble she could fit together elements of it indicating words. Ben wondered how she had found courage for such a project before he and Reuben were present to aid her. But she was still troubled even with their aid. No motto was ever quite good enough on second thought. Occasionally she changed the lovely border too. Once Ben had found her rocking in her sewing chair and weeping because, she said, a brown thread among the leaves was the _wrong_ brown and must be picked out, every st.i.tch, and that by candlelight. Her eyes hurt--weren't as good as they used to be.

"Woman dear," said Reuben, "you've gone and lost the paper."

She blinked in sorrow at the hominy and sausage she set before him.

"That I have, and I don't understand how a body _can_ be so heedless. I did, I had it in my basket, and then I vow I must've wrapped something in it, maybe a skein, and put it away somewhere, _I_ don't know where--why, my mind's light, light as a wh.o.r.e's promise, I just don't _think_ good."

Ben reached out to pat her fat floury hand, as Reuben said: "Then we'll draw you a fresh one. A nothing for such scholars as me and my little brother--only, bruit it not abroad that ever I said such a thing. You know, Kate, the sin of vanity in us--sad, sad."

She chuckled, das.h.i.+ng a comfortable tear from a bulging cheek, and bounced away to deal with a fresh emergency. Fragments of yesterday's chicken sat on a side table waiting a destiny in soup, and the lean yellow tomcat, Mr. Eccles, had wandered in nursing a sordid plot, one easily detected and swiftly refuted by a whisk of Kate's ap.r.o.n. He came over to rub Ben's leg rather grimly, knowing well enough that breakfast sausage is not cat-food. "Which motto was it, Kate?--believe I've lost track."

"Oh--le' me think, Master Benjamin--'Let peace in this house be everlasting as the sea'--it was real pretty." She wiped an eye and sighed. "Boys, I was thinking--maybe it's foolish, maybe it a'n't even right I should try such a thing, but I was thinking, what if I was to make that motto something in the _Latin_? He'd favor it so--wouldn't he?"

"The very thing!" Reuben exclaimed. "Hark 'ee: _Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori._ That's Virgil, Kate."

"Think of that! That's real Latin, Master Reuben? But--but a'n't it terrible short?"

"Oh, Kate!--greatest things said with fewest words."

"It do sound pretty. What's it mean?"

"Love conquereth all things, let us yield to love."

"You wouldn't play no j.a.pe on me, would you?"

"Save us!" Ben knew his brother was genuinely shocked. "Not about the sampler, Kate!"

"I know, dear."

"Only ask Mr. Hibbs whether my translation be right, if you doubt me."

"Nay nay, Reuben, love, I don't at all.... Love conquereth--"

Ben said: "Love conquereth all things."

"Ah me!" She came near, a soft hand on Ben's shoulder, her small sweet mouth like pink petals fallen in bread dough. "Ben, boy, you be a little changed. Something happen, Master Benjamin?--maybe Monday?"

"Monday? Why, Uncle John's _Artemis_ came home from her maiden voyage that day, and a prettier vessel you never--"

"Oh, bother old _Artemis_! And ha' done with talk of the sea too--ask Mr. John, what's it ever done but make widows, and empty graves in the G.o.d's acre?"

Reuben said to his empty plate: "The tale goes, it may have been filled by the tears of Chronos who was before all the G.o.ds."

"Ha?--oh, your talk, Master Reuben. But only look at Ben boy there a-blus.h.i.+ng! Bound to happen--I knowed it, I knowed it, I know all the signs of what makes the world go 'round, and who should know 'em better?

O Ben, oh dearie me, soon you'll be a-moping about with a long face, there'll be a wringin' of hands, you'll go sighing with the springtime in your loins and no living with you at all. Ben dear! Tell Kate. Is she fair, Ben? Is she kind?"

"Now, Kate, truly!"

_He will go where I cannot go. Three years past he told me something of his dreams, but I dream never that way, never._

"Why, Ben, not a word! Mumchance. But I know, for a'n't I _alway_ said it was love 't makes the world go 'round? Oh dearie me, they do grow to be men before there's time a spider should build her web over the cradle where they was rocked."

"Can't help it, Kate, the way you stuff Reuben and me with sausage and kindness, we're bound to get big and bad and greasy."

_Where he goeth I cannot go, and he will be much loved, as he ought to be, but I ... I think that I...._

"Phoo, didn't I marry for love me own self, the more fool me for not listening to wiser heads, however and moreover I don't regret it nor won't to my dying day, though it was a wh.o.r.eson hard thing to learn the cull was na' but a file, dearie."

"A file, Kate?"

_He said: A man of learning must often hide ... even more from the almost-wise. He said: You and I ought to be friends._

"Nay, Ben, it's right you shouldn't know the word, it's only London-town cant and means a common cutpurse, that's all he was, him and his fair talk to me about an inheritance, washed down you might say with the kissing and the sweet looks and the tumbling--marry, could I say no to the likes of him, and meself as hot and limber as a March hare, could I?

Well, rest him quiet, he danced for it at Tyburn."

"Oh, I remember. You've spoke of it before, but I'd forgotten the word.

Kate, you shouldn't let those old memories rise up and trouble you--not here, and the old country so far away."

_It's back from the Cambridge road (he said nothing about coming to visit him), the cottage with green-painted shutters. Something discourteous the way I ran, but he did say...._

"Ay, it's far. Repent?--phoo! nor they wouldn't've got him, never, only he drunk hisself blind in a tavern and talked, so you see, dearie, it was the rum that ruint him, and never took a strap to me neither except he was in the drink, and that only once or twice. Repent?--why, didn't he spit on the foot of the gallows tree and c.o.c.k his head at the sky to see a shower coming, and didn't he say to the ordinary: 'Ha' done canting and go to hanging, man, can't you see it's coming on to rain and must I catch a quinsy for King Charles' sake, G.o.d bless him?'"

"Maybe he repented later, Kate--I mean in the last moment when there was no way to say the words."

_How much he must know! Why not medicine? Nay, think of it, Ru Cory, why not? WHY NOT?_

"Not him. Why, didn't he wave a purse that he'd h'isted from the ordinary's own pocket, that he had--waved it and throwed it to the crowd and cried: 'Here, culls, drink me a remembrancer!' That he did, anyway so a friend told me that was there and seen it all, the which I couldn't be meself, being in childbed on his account--died, the little thing, and best maybe seeing it'd've had no father, and then me for the colonies, I suppose it was a long time ago."

"Well...."

_But if I am--if there be some evil, some mark of evil to make others recoil as from a leper--but it can't be so, it can't. Would that man know (could I ask him?) why so often I--why--why----_

"But do you know, dearie, I had another friend in the crowd that day to see him die, and she told me the tale different, I can't understand how it could be so different, how that my Jem was leaden-faced, and fought the rope, nor spoke nothing at all but some mumbling about former times, and how his life should be an example--example, with a pox! That wasn't never his way of talk, but--but maybe he did and all. No purse for the crowd, she said, nothing like that."

"I don't think it happened that way, Kate."

_Could I kill a wolf again if there was need? I think I could._

"'Deed she said there was but few present to watch it, and the officers in haste to be done with it because the rain was already falling--I don't know, I don't know."

"Kate, from what you say of him, I'm certain it was the way the other friend told you, that he met it bravely, and threw the purse too, not for impudence but only so to hold himself a man to the end."

_How long it is now since I was child enough to cry out: G.o.d help me!_