Wilderness of Spring Part 32

"Lean on me. Firm ground here."

"Wherever thou art."

"I shall remember that, and thou wilt forget it."

"I forget nothing, Reuben. I _was_ trying 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?"

_Chapter Five_

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?

Must _I_ wait on the needs of this moaning monster?"

"Some day when _you_ feel like dawn on the battlefield, I'll stand on your stomach and read aloud every word of _Magnalia 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 an _ex post facto_ invention. 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 G.o.d! 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 s.h.i.+ning and troubled and amazed, Reuben turned to him and started once or twice to speak, then said only: "Yes."

"You can--oh, d.a.m.n my head!--you can be certain?"

"I'm--certain. I did go to see Mr. Welland again yesterday. He spoke of an apprentices.h.i.+p."

"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--and _that_ I desire." He smiled suddenly, vulnerably, holding up his little finger. "There are creatures so tiny--Mr. Welland showed me a book, the _Micrographia_--so tiny there might be hundreds, nay thousands of them there on the s.p.a.ce 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?"