Wilderness of Spring Part 49

Some day, Reuben thought--oh, some day perhaps that other world ought to be explored, if only for the sake of the slow, strange enterprise of trying to learn a little about the human race. Amadeus would probably say that it ought.

Never with Charity of course. Reuben was aware that Charity, very much a woman this last year, did not regard him as a potentially aggressive male, but as a friend who could be trusted to listen with kindness, share a moment of mirth, speak with intelligence about the fantastic pictures she still liked to draw, and even take her part against those restrictions of a woman's world that chafed her to rage. Besides, there was that day in November, soon after the move to Dorchester, when Charity Jenks threw her snarled-up sewing all the way across Kenny's library and flung herself crying into Reuben's arms, to speak of a sorrow until then unknown to him. A servant of theirs, a French-born slave Clarissa, had been sold to New York when the household was broken up, seeing there was no place for her at Dorchester--and that girl, said Charity, had been her real mother for years and years, and was the only friend she would ever have. "You have me," said Reuben, and was startled to watch her considering that, sniffling, accepting it and seeming remarkably comforted. A few minutes later she was speaking, for the first time freely and shamelessly--about Ben. And then of the house at Dorchester, which was near the sh.o.r.e. She had found a place where tumbled rocks made three walls excluding the land, the fourth side open to the sea--you could look out for miles on a clear day, and could hardly fail to see any of the s.h.i.+ps that came into Boston out of the south; she'd draw him a picture. She did so; and then this spring, about a month ago, Reuben had seen that lookout for himself, making a harmless conspiracy of the secret approach to it, since otherwise tongues would have wagged and clattered. It had seemed to him, in the fair sun of that spring afternoon, beyond reach of a thunderous high tide but not beyond the reach of the spray, that Charity was almost happy, though not in the same way or to the same degree that he had been happy himself for some moments, even hours, in the past year....

Well, it would be no simple or pleasant thing, to tell Ben about Faith's marriage. Do it quickly, lightly, ready to go along with whatever mood took Ben at the news. Then later, maybe, the wedding could be described in--_in harrumphitatis Reubencoribus_. "I did endeavor, little Benjamin, to place my spirit in such posture as to snap up any unconsidered morsels of hymeneal sanct.i.ty that might be flipped my way when the good and just Eliphalet Hoskison re-entered that holy state in manly pride and a gingery-yallery weskit"--Revise! Leave out most of Hoskison; to h.e.l.l with Eliphalet Hoskison and the ivory b.u.t.tons on that hemi-spherical weskit!--"but my chaste resolution, sir, was overruled, and barely indeed could I repress the cachinnations of a lewd nature and subsume the concupiscent, when my perspiring attention was led astray by observation of a touching yet not wholly tragical prodigy--prodigal tragedy--of nature. Nay rather, in these latter years I have come to regard it as a pastoral or even, mm-yas, a comical-historical-pastoral interlude, the which I will elucidate if you perpend. The dominie who wedded those twain was not, little Benjamin, a tall man, and on the top he was bald as a baby's bottom--for this I can summon witnesses if need arise. Now as he stood before us in the ultimate or perhaps the penultimate prayer, it was required of him to lower that benevolent denuded skull, and I did behold, advancing unto the pinkish radiance thereof, a small fly. A fly, sir, buffeted by the gathering winds of October and, I think, lonely. He circled the dull glow thrice, I saw it, and thrice flew away, and yet once more returned--drawn, do you see, to the services in spite of original and later sin--and circled a last time resisting the call, unrepentant, naughty in mortal pride and unredeemed, but in the end lit softly upon the holy ground. There did he scrub his forelegs, Benjamin, and listen, taking thereafter a few sprightly steps toward a certain silvery fringe, the which must have indicated to him: 'Thus far and no farther!' Strait is the gate and few that enter, mm-yas. Frustrated and remote indeed from a state of grace, he did flirt his saucy wings, and listen, and scrub his middle legs, and bravely attempt another region of the fringe where he was again baffled and cast down. _Fiat just.i.tia, ruat caelum!_ I watched him returning to the center, broken (as I thought) in spirit, not one of the elect yet loathing his sins and mourning after the pardon of them, but there most delicately--O Ben, Ben, as a fellow sinner I foresaw this and my bowels yearned for him--there most delicately did he lay down a mild brown memento of his presence as a representative of the secular arm. Thereat he shuddered but the act was done, _ad majorem lignocapitis humani gloriam_. He listened then as it were with an absent mind. He c.o.c.ked his red head at me as we listened, and I knew then, Benjamin, I knew from the shameless manner of his conversation that mercy and salvation had pa.s.sed him by. He sampled the pink surface with an heretical tongue and thought little of it. Lost even to the sense of decorum, he r'ared up behind and scrubbed his ultimate legs--furtively, however, you understand, like any other boy in church. And then at last (in fact at very long last) he rose up and buzzed away--relieved but not saved, not saved at all, by the resonance of an Amen."

Later. Mm-yas--much later, if at all....

He walked in the mist, no longer remembering but in the here-and-now, coming at length to the cottage, where he would have tapped on the window, but Amadeus Welland came to him across the lawn out of the mist.

"I slept a while but was restless. A turn around the garden--sends me off sometimes. Is it one of his bad nights, Reuben?"

"Nay, not bad, in fact I thought him rather cheerful, as far as one can guess. I read to him, his usual Montaigne, and then a little from the _Religio_ because he seemed to be listening and enjoying it. When Kate relieved me I think he was not far from sleep. Ah, how long, Amadeus?"

"No one could possibly say. I once knew the apoplexy to leave a woman quite motionless and yet alive for six years. Others go in a few moments, a few weeks. And there are remissions, don't forget. It's no mere word of comfort to say that he might recover his speech, even the use of his left side, or partial use. I've seen that happen. Or it might be that when he falls asleep tonight, or some night, he won't wake."

"He said once--if I rightly understood the words, but he was excited, trying too hard to speak, and so they were difficult--he said he could not die until Ben comes home."

"Well.... The mere thought of it might do much to keep him in this world a while. n.o.body understands the power of the mind over the flesh--or ought I to say, over the rest of the flesh? Or the power of flesh over the mind. We don't know, we don't know."

"I know it is May, and a misty night."

"Yes, and thou art here."

"And I think I enjoy the misty nights, Amadeus, mm, even the nights when the moon's down as much as the others, and I've wondered why, and I think I know the reason. I enjoy them because I know that, while others are sometimes afraid of the dark, I am not. I can tell you, I can tell you surely, I'm not afraid of anything in nature. Am I speaking nonsense, I wonder? Why, before a lion my flesh would cringe and squeak, I don't doubt it, but somewhere, Amadeus, somewhere in here there's a part of me would hold calm and yield nothing even to the thought of mine own death."

"Have I not alway known that, in thee?"

"You have?"

"Yes."

"So again I learn something.... I'm tired."

"Come in then and rest."

"Yes, that's my wish," said Reuben, but he knelt and took Welland's hands and rested his forehead in the warmth of them.

"Art thou in need of me?"

"You've taught me how tomorrow is another region, so let it be--I'm not part of it tonight. I shall be forever in need of you."

"But there will be years...."

"When you die before me, a thing I do accept because I must, I shall be in need of you still, and will bear the need, and laugh sometimes, and work as you've taught me, and grow old--I swear I'm not afraid. I told my brother once I would sail with him to the Spice Islands. Where do children go, Amadeus?"

"Matthew, you may call me an old fart, you that's no b.l.o.o.d.y lamb yourself, but I can remember when I was a boy in Gloucester. More and more I remember it, the decent way of living there and the little houses--no easterly ever shook them houses, Matthew, tight to the ground the way they was, they a'n't got the wit to build no such way in Boston.

Good, that it was. Eh, I remember that low-tide smell in my mother's kitchen, year 'round, call it a stink if you like, not me, you might say I was born to it. That was a good life--if a man could live G.o.dfearing, not go whoring after strange inventions, listening at the Devil in his left ear."

"Oh, 'vast preaching, Joey, I got no heart for it."

"I a'n't preaching. Oons, I was only crowding thirteen when I first went on my father's sloop. We was to the Banks, good luck all the way, home with cod to the gun'ls. Weight of one more fish scale would've sunk her, my father said, and said it was me brung him the good luck. Me! That's a futtering laugh, that is, all the same he said it. I'll trouble you for that bottle.... Dried-up scarecrow, five good teeth in my head, you got to remember I was young one time.... I can't think how I ever come to listen at that man, and me a watchman, all done with the sea or should've been. Now don't betray me, Matthew Ledyard. Don't never let it out I said such a thing. I got no wish to die at _his_ hand, and far from home."

"You look young now--being it's that dark a man can't see his fingers."

"Now that's not comical, Matthew, that's not kind.... Matthew."

"Yah?"

"Moon'll be up in an hour.... What if we don't go back to the ketch?"

"You fool, he means to clear out of here on the morning ebb."

"I know that."

"Well? Orders was to row back no later 'n moonrise. It was a favor, to leave us stay on the beach this long so to stretch our legs and catch a nap off s.h.i.+pboard--knows we got a bottle too. He wants them water kegs no later 'n moonrise and the fruit too, though I can't say that's good for nothing but to make a great slosh into a man's belly, let 'em say it keeps off scurvy if they like, I won't eat the b.l.o.o.d.y muck and never had no scurvy.... Joey Mills, don't be more of a d.a.m.n fool than you can avoid."

"A man could hide on this island. He'd maroon us--willingly."

"And him breaking his heart for a year because he's short-handed?"

"But Matthew, he's jumpy here as the Devil in a gale of wind. He's got no love for the Bahamas. Call him mad, but he means all he says. Could he get him another vessel good as _Artemis_--ha! _Diana_--and enough hands for safety, he'd be off and away after his daft dreams to the other side of the world. He'd hunt for us here, yah, but not long."

"Long enough to find your gandy-shank back'ard end sticking out of a bush and sink a hook in it. And we'd live on what? Fruit and clams?"

"I seen goat tracks back there a piece this afternoon."

"Luff, you b.l.o.o.d.y beggar! You're stern-heavy. Got your old a.r.s.e spread to a following wind, let 'er freshen and down you go by the head. Tell you what he'd do. He'd say to that fat swine Tom Ball: 'Down!' he'd say, and down would Ball go on all fours and come rooting up the whole island for you like the hog he is."

"You sure to G.o.d hate that man, don't you?"

"Two G.o.ds he has, his belly and his other purse. Why wouldn't I? Wasn't it Ball mostly that set me against the Old Man? Begun it the day after we come into Boston last year, and now I know that him and Shawn was old friends reunited and Shawn had set him up to it, but then I thought Ball was an honest cod. Sought me out, he did--come to my house, drank up with me, praised the wife's cooking, things like that. And begun dropping little things in my ear to turn me against the Old Man. One evening he told me Cap'n Jenks laughed behind my back about my--my face, my mark. Lies, all lies, but it wasn't till it was far too late that I knowed it must be all lies, and Shawn set him up to it so to win me over to his G.o.d-d.a.m.ned venture. I could run a knife in Shawn, but that Tom Ball, he ought to be tried out in one of French Jack's kettles--slow, for the lard.... Suppose we don't go back to the ketch. Suppose we stayed alive, and sometime an honest s.h.i.+p took us off. You think there's any place in the world for us now? Boston? Gloucester? Can we go anywhere and not be hanged? Gi' me that bottle back."

"I was thinking of Virginia."

"Virginia, he says. Her Majesty's law don't reach there, ha? Why, word of _Artemis_ will have gone all up and down the coast for a year."

"Maybe. Suppose.... If we got to go back to the ketch, suppose we might--do something?... Matthew, it come to me, that man Shawn made one big mistake in his b.l.o.o.d.y life."

"Keeping the Old Man alive?"

"Ay, that, but that a'n't what I meant. Sure, only a madman would have let Jenks live. Tell you something about that too, something I seen the other day when I was into the cabin to carry out slops. But the big mistake Shawn made was when he stole that boy. I'm old. I watch, I see things. They say you can't kill a witch but with a silver bullet. I tell you plain, if anyone ever does for Shawn, it won't be one of us."

"Why, that boy couldn't harm----"

"I know. Gentle as a May morning, and that's all you see. I see more.

A'n't Shawn tried to break him for a year now? Make him over into something the Devil himself wouldn't own? Has he done it?--tell me that.

A'n't I heard 'em talk together, devil and angel? I say, Matthew, some time, maybe soon, it'll come to life and death between them two, and I'm prophesying: it won't be Ben Cory that dies."