"Oh!" That was a startled sound, without laughter. Mr. Welland looked
away from him so long that Reuben's pleasure clouded over. He could have
gone too far; said something wrong; happiness and friendship could
tumble, an air-castle in ruins. Mr. Welland was holding out the
snuffbox, closed. "Try if you can discover the catch. If you can I'll
tell you who gave it me."
Reuben studied it, aware he was being tested in some way that went far
beyond the trifling problem. The box was of ebony, the sides covered
with intricate carving of grape leaves. The enameled picture inset in
the cover displayed a naked goat-leg fellow plucking a cluster from a
vine. Since pressure on the carving brought no result, Reuben
methodically tried lifting the leaves With a thumbnail until one yielded
and the box was open.
"Mph!--most persons spend half an hour and give it up. Well, it was
given me--worthless keepsake, he said--by Sir Thomas Sydenham, when as a
young man stuffed with mine own importance I called upon him at London.
He was most kind. Corrected my quantities, I recall, when I ventured a
Latin tag in what he tolerantly called my vile colonial accent. He died,
I believe, in the year of the revolution, 1689--so you see, Reuben, time
and change, and we grow old somehow." Reuben thought: But he is not
speaking to himself in the far-off way of the old; he is speaking to
_me_, and for _my_ sake.... "Perhaps you never heard of Sir Thomas?"
"No, sir, I never did."
"He hath been called the English Hippocrates--an exaggeration, but a
great man certainly, I think the greatest in medicine since Harvey."
"Harvey?"
"There are gaps in your learning after all. I'll be happy to tell you
about Harvey if you like. About Signor Malpighi too, who as it happens
discovered the presence of the capillaries by dissecting the lung of a
frog. Not one of your frogs of course. Some Swiss or Italian frog,
unknown benefactor of science."
"Did you think, sir, I was all vain because I like to make comical
noises with big words?"
"No, sir. On reflection--no; I did not think that."
"I've been called--oh, flippant or the like, because it seems I do now
and then laugh at the wrong time."
"Who calls you that?"
"Oh!... My tutor for one, but meaneth no harm by it. Actually he's very
kind, and I suppose I try him badly, but then by chance I'll pronounce
some Latin quantity correctly or come unscathed through the horrid
jungle of some Greek verb, and he forgiveth all."
"M. Cory, I have been sitting here fearing that perhaps _I_ had laughed
at the wrong times, and that you might regard me as--mm-yas, flippant or
the like."
"I do not."
"In that view of the case, perhaps you and I ought to be friends."
"As a matter of fact," said Reuben, "I thought we already were."
* * * * *
South of Boston Neck the road to Roxbury entered a desolate mile between
the waters of Gallows Bay on the east and a waste of salt marsh. Here
the smell of the sea was all about you; above, a meager crying of gulls
in the windy daytime. Near Roxbury the salt flats and Gallows Bay were
partly hidden by woods and rocky knolls. Lights were said to wander this
mile of road at night, not fireflies nor lanterns of vessels on Gallows
Bay, which had honestly earned its name.
Efforts had been made to pave the road during the last sixty or seventy
years. Stones rose up and walked. Hence derived grave democratic
discussion and heartburning: if you have all the rocks of New England to
draw upon, there's still nothing so pleasing as a paving block to
support the sills of a barn, especially if it be cut as God might have
left it in a state of nature, so that no town father can lay his hand on
his heart and swear it came from the particular hole where his horse
broke a leg.
Ben Cory watched a soaring of white wings tipped with black as a gull
drifted out of sight over the marshes. Out here the white-headed eagles
came at times, lesser life falling quiet. Lordly, Uncle John called
them, but said they were cowardly pirates too, and told once how he had
watched them circle about till other birds rose with hard-won fish, and
then torment them into yielding it. Ben wondered as the gull vanished,
why he should think of the man Daniel Shawn. He had missed something
Uncle John was saying, and clucked to his mare. "Your pardon, sir?"
"I was saying Mr. Jenks had three daughters, Faith, Hope and Charity.
Hope died as an infant. Charity's but a young thing...."
"Faith is--charming, I thought."
"She is," said Uncle John with total dryness. "Ben, I wish your opinion
of that fat man, that new bosun Tom Ball."
"My opinion?" Flattered and flustered, Ben drew his wits away from the
dream of Faith. "He's short of words certainly, Uncle John. He only
showed me about the deck while you was engaged with Mr. Dyckman, and I
don't recall he said more than half a dozen words, and that in so thick
a talk--Devon, isn't it?--I missed much of it. That's not fat, Uncle
John, that's mostly brawn, I believe.... I don't like it, sir, when a
man stares at me long without winking. They say it's the candid way, but
I feel more as if he was defying me to call him a liar."
"Eh, Benjamin, you're somewhat sharp. I don't like him either, but Mr.
Jenks calls him a good sailor. Ay, Devon, where my father was
born--within sound of the Channel, he used to say, and could speak of
the old country pleasantly when he was not laying about him as the
Lord's own interpreter and flail...."
"You said Mr. Jenks never visits about ashore?"
"Mph!... Ben, when you're a man grown, should you find yourself a little
too fond of drink, I suggest you resist it, even sometimes at cost of
being named a poor thing, canting killjoy or whatever. 'Tis a matter of
being your own man. Should you find--by your own judgment, boy--that
drinking interferes with that, don't drink. Did you like Mr. Shawn?"
"Yes, sir, I did like him, very much. Are you telling me indirectly,
Uncle John, that Captain Jenks----?"
"I am." Mr. Kenny halted his gray gelding on a rise of ground. "I like
to pause here, Ben, where you see only the roofs and little threads of
smoke.... Yes, he's something a slave to it, though never aboard ship.
At sea he allows his men the ration and not a drop for himself. But
ashore he must fall into another sea, of liquor--drifting, helpless, I
don't know what stops him from sinking altogether. Blameth it on the
moon and tides--his fancy. He told me once how in the dark times of the
moon at sea he goes near mad with need of it but won't yield--then I
dare say it'll go hard with every man aboard. The moon's his friend in
some manner--he's well enough when she's waxing full, sad and bitten by
his need when she waneth, noticed it a thousand times. I told him who
Artemis was in the legends of the Greeks, virgin huntress and goddess of
the moon. He was pleased, and turned on my ketch a newly loving eye. A
troubled man, Benjamin. Knoweth well what is right, but no one ever
tells him, no preacher or any other. Having shaken hands with him at
last, I dare say you can imagine why few would undertake it."
"My hand still aches.... Sir, do you think that if I--I mean when I go
to Harvard, I shall know what I wish to do, that is for a life's work?"
So it was spoken, the doubt that had been nagging his days.
"I trust so, Ben." And was that all? Ben wondered--was that all the old
man would say? A gust of wind full of the sea smell blew across Ben's
shoulder and sent a last year's oak leaf scurrying down the road. The
wind's embrace was cold, the leaf a reminder of autumn in the flood of
spring. "You know I concur in the wish your father expressed in his last
moments: you and Reuben must acquire learning. But then the decision
must be with you. If you should decide to take up my affairs when I'm
done with 'em, why, I'll be pleased, more perhaps I shouldn't say.
Trade, commerce--it's not dull, Ben, so long as one keeps the wit alive
with a private philosophy. Our holy friends make great show of despising
it, the while it keeps them and the rest of us fed and clothed. It might
not suit Reuben--well well, let time work a little on it, boy.... If you
should come to see it that way, remember ships are the thing, and there
our dirty Boston's got 'em all by the nose. Never be a port in the
Americas to match her, never."