Wilderness of Spring Part 25

"Yes, ma'am, very well these days." (What was the use?)

"I join you, Mr. Carey, in praising, for that mercy, the Dispenser of All Things." Madam Jenks went on to p.r.o.nounce the weather changeable; Ben agreed; Faith expressed intelligent neutrality. Small silence spread like a blot of ink.... "I understand you intend going to the college this year, Mr. Carey?"

"Yes, ma'am, my brother and I."

"Preparing for the ministry, I presume?"

"Neither of us would appear to have the call, Madam Jenks."

"Indeed.... Do you enjoy the Boston air?"

"I don't think I've ever heard it, ma'am."

"Your pardon, sir?"

"Nay, I--beg _your_ pardon--I must have misunderstood."

"My inquiry was in reference to the Boston air. Do you enjoy it?"

"Oh, very much...."

By some transition which Ben heard but didn't understand--the instant of kaleidoscopic s.h.i.+ft was blurred for him by a gleam of merriment in Faith--Madam Jenks was comparing cats and dogs. "'Tis true a cat is a tidy beast and of value if she be a good mouser, but one can feel no affection for them."

"Why," said Ben, "our big yellow cat----"

"They are treacherous," said Madam Jenks. The comb was rising. "Now a dog is a faithful animal instant ever to his master's needs, for it would appear the Lord hath prepared him for the service of man, and I am trying, Faith, to recall the name of a small dog Mr. Jenks owned, you must remember: I mean the one that was two before Sultan, or was it three?--with a white ear."

"You must be thinking of Prince, Mama."

"No, my dear, seeing that Prince was the one that fell down the well, and Goodman Jennison spent the better part of a forenoon attempting to rescue the poor brute and had no white ear to be sure."

"Rags?"

"Faith, Rags was black, and was given to us by Mr. Riggs when his good wife was taken to the Lord, and was obliged for business reasons to go to Newport for some weeks, and certainly had no white ear, and was indeed rather ill-natured, in fact we were obliged to give him away, since he did not return from Newport until some damage had already been done to Goody Jennison's herb garden, the which I regret."

Ben wondered how long Charity had been standing in the hallway, a paper clasped to her square breast and Sultan lying on her shoes. She might have been waiting for Ben to smile, since when he did she dislodged the dog with a backward step and brought him the paper, ignoring her elders.

"My word, Charity!" Faith spoke kindly. "Mr. Cory doesn't wish to look at pictures."

"He told me he did," said Charity flatly, and laid the paper on Ben's knee, leaning close. "This be the one with feathers restored."

"Oh, I see." Confusedly, Ben saw more than that. It had never occurred to him that lines of ink on paper could move and sing. A stream glittered with fragmented ice. Ben could feel the vulnerable pride of the swallow twitching a pert forked tail, tilting a round head toward distant cloud. And how should Charity have made him actually hear the slow yielding of a brook to the coming of spring? Those naked things huddled under the water--swallows maybe, or squirming babies, ambiguous, blind. The eye clung to them, not in laughter.

"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "I believe Mr. Carey would prefer to look at pictures another time."

Charity tried to ignore that. In nearness she was all little-girl softness and warmth, electric. Little?--thirteen.

"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "go and aid Clarissa with the refreshments.

You should have remembered it before."

Ben blurted: "Charity, this is beautiful."

"Charity," said Madam Jenks.

Charity inhaled carefully. "Very well, Mama, I will leave the room."

The red comb popped. Ben had been half-prepared for that, and for the deferential scramble he now performed. Under cover of the commotion Charity vanished with the picture, Sultan gloomily following.

"Thankful heart!" The comb restored, Madam Jenks fanned herself. "Ah well, a difficult time of life I suppose. You have no idea, Mr. Carey, the hours of grief and dismay, I have sought guidance on my knees, the which she'll be the death of me yet considering the palpitations of my heart, nevertheless when the Lord calls me to my long home I shall certainly go."

"Mama!" Faith murmured. "I'm sure in a few years she'll learn poise and manners. 'Tis only a pa.s.sing thing. Why, when I was her age I'm sure I was difficult too."

"Nay, my darling, never intractable, never strange, alway a consolation to me. Faith is my great comfort, Mr. Carey, you've no idea."

"I'm sorry she plagued you, Mr. Cory."

"But--truly she didn't. Anyway, that picture--"

"Art," said Madam Jenks sadly. "When I think how Mr. Jenks and I have striven to teach her womanly ways, and all to no purpose, and then such dreadful pa.s.sion if she be crossed in the lightest particular, even in these trivial childish notions of art, the which she could not have got it from Mr. Jenks or myself, good heavens!"

Charity said from the doorway: "I heard that." Sultan had given up trying to sleep; he leaned against her leg and whined.

"Oh, Charity, Charity--I suppose you never even went near the kitchen to help Clarissa."

Charity's square face had gone dull red to the eyelids. "She said she had no need of me. Mama, I brought that picture to Mr. Cory because he did ask to see it."

The red comb popped. Ben gathered it up again, but could not immediately return it, for Madam Jenks needed all her powers for speech. "I should have supposed, Charity, that at your years you might have acquired some trace of manners if not of grat.i.tude, the which I do not ask although a child of thirteen is certainly capable, and never no unjust correction nor harsh words if not wholly yielded up to depravity, the which----"

"Mama, I am becoming exceedingly wrathful."

"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "we will _not_ have one of your Times. I forbid it. Go to your room, after all the effort your father and I have made, and that continually."

"Don't you bring Papa into it and him lying up there dead to the world!"

"_Charity!_" That was Faith, rising, then kneeling quickly by her mother, whose round face had gone gray as ash.

"I will go away forever," said Charity in a sudden loud rage of tears.

"Even as Mr. Binyon. I tell you my steps will go down unto the Wh.o.r.e of Babylon!"

"Reuben, I've thought occasionally that the game hath something in common with the course of living. The opening--that's a preparation like youth, and I alway thought, if a chess player might truly understand the opening no other player could defeat him--a'n't that so? Still, it is too complex, the possibilities too near to infinite, for any mind to hold 'em all, and so the best of players will inevitably fumble the opening, at least a little, missing some bright opportunities, the result a compromise with what might have been. Then the middle game--action, struggle, changes of fortune, more opportunities lost, and a few fairly grasped at the just moment."

"I believe I like that, Mr. Welland. And the end game?"

"The end game, if one may arrive at it--some die young, you know, some from a Fool's Mate, or blind chance may overset the board--but if one may arrive--oh dear! Oh dear me! That knight, through my poor wall of p.a.w.ns--dare say it's all up with me. I will try this. What next?"

"This, sir. You left a hole for my Bishop too."