"Last night, sir, I wrote out a translation of the lines in _De Finibus_
that you assigned us for this afternoon. I--wished to know if I could do
so without aid. I mean, sir--Ru hath helped me often at other times,
being swifter at these things, so I--so I didn't tell him of it. And if
it be satisfactory, Mr. Hibbs, may I go to Boston this afternoon?"
Mr. Hibbs stared at the paper Ben handed him, like a man hit by a chunk
of firewood. "Done without aid, ha?"
"It was, sir. I even waited till Ru was asleep, for fear I'd give up and
ask him for help after all."
Reuben gazed deeply into the swirling black midgets that had been the
text of Ovid; he instructed himself: _It doesn't matter. It does not
matter. Seeing that he will go--_
"No objection," Mr. Hibbs was saying vacantly--"no objection to the two
of you helping each other: I expect it and you profit by it, but I can
see, I understand, Benjamin, I--uh--commend your industry and the
sentiment that must have prompted it." His voice trailed away under the
threat of another sneeze, and Reuben knew that he must speak.
"It's quite true, Mr. Hibbs. I knew nothing of it till just now." _Was
that good enough? Did I snarl, or squeak?..._
"Of course. This translation is--not bad, Benjamin. Some errors, but
nothing that cannot be caught up--uh--tomorrow. I'm assuming your
great-uncle hath nothing against it, or you would mention it,
being"--the sneeze arrived and passed on--"being an honorable boy. Yes,
you may have the afternoon. No precedent, of course."
"I understand that, sir, and thank you."
There was grammar, there was logic, there were Greek verbs, there was in
the air a warm premonition of luncheon. Mr. Hibbs tucked his books
under his arm and marched upstairs, where he would allow himself a
five-minute meditation before the meal. He was willing to explain this
exercise without embarrassment. It was not the same as prayer, but a
contemplation of nothing, a device for clearing his mind of trivia in
the hope of perceiving a moment of truth.... "Ru, why don't you come
too? You could easy catch up the work if he gives you the afternoon, and
he would--for all his barking you know you can twist him any way you
please."
"No, bub," said Reuben lightly--but he was afraid to look up from his
desk at the puzzled kindness he knew he would see. "There'll be a tag
end of the afternoon when Pontifex hath done his worst, and I--wish to
do something else."
"Something else?"
"Oh, I--nothing too important."
Ben looked hurt. "About the Cicero--haven't I leaned on thee too much,
Ru? I never did think to wound thee, doing that."
"I'm not wounded! I"--_careful, Ru Cory!_--"I commend your industry."
"Ru!"
"I'm sorry. About this afternoon--you remember Mr. Welland?"
"Welland? Oh, the doctor?"
"Yes, I--he knows so much--I met him by chance the other day, when you
was in Boston----"
It was no use. What had seemed clear a little while ago, a lamp in a
parting of the mist, was now once more submerged in fog, and Reuben lost
his way in a tangle of half-exasperated words, trying to reassure Ben
that a wish to see Mr. Welland had nothing whatever to do with being
ill.
* * * * *
Older and neater than neighboring houses, the Jenks house was shielded
from them by a coach house, and on the other side by a small fenced-in
garden. Such aloofness would not save it if flames like those of 1679 or
'91 ever raged into this western quarter of the city, where many still
owned the forbidden wood-framed chimneys and hoped for the best. Fires
in the past had usually started near the docks. That might be the
reason why Captain Jenks wished to keep the breadth of the town between
him and the ships that were his daily bread.
Approaching the house, Ben had been sharply aware of second-floor
windows, feeling eyes in a way remarkably like fright if only it weren't
absurd to be frightened at calling on a girl. Now he held back his hand
from the knocker, studying the garden with unstable dignity, suppressing
a hope that nobody was at home. He admired the grape arbor, enlivened
already by a white and brown of buds, and noted here and there the brave
glow of daffodils. Flagstone walks suggested a trust in permanence.
He remembered other doorways, how they had stood between him and the
unknown. Three years ago one had opened, himself and Reuben standing in
rags on the threshold and unable to speak at all to the face with
owl-tufts, for John Kenny had answered the door himself, looking down
his nose. "To what have I the honor--oh, my soul! Your mother's look,
the both of you--come in out of the cold!" Not until hours later, when
they were washed and fed and settled in the room where they now lived,
did John Kenny speak of his sister's letter announcing their tragic
death in the jaws of the beast, a passing hard example of the infinite
wisdom of God. He had answered the letter, he said, with the proper
sentiments. Very much later, weeks later, Mr. Kenny's own conscience
moved him to write another letter even more stately, explaining that the
boys appeared to be abundantly alive and would remain with him until of
man's years. This letter was never answered by Rachel Cory; after three
years, it seemed unlikely that it ever would be. That doorway had opened
on years of change, as all years are, but Ben held a private notion that
the century really turned then, in March of 1704: for himself and Reuben
an end to flame and trouble except for whatever stirred within--and this
only natural, since any boy or man is a volcano with a thin crust and
knows it.
Ben sounded the knocker. Now he must remember to take off his hat after
the door opened, not before--supposing it ever did.
It opened. In Puritan gray and white, she of the brown face was
regarding him with amiable recognition. Ben had started to claw his hat
at the first rattle of the latch; he checked that, and was now able to
remove it, not gracefully but at least without dropping it on her shoes.
All this the slave girl observed with calm, secure in cool gravity, a
well-trained servant waiting for him to speak, but there could be no
doubt about that flash of welcome. "Mistress Faith Jenks--is she at
home?" He spoke so softly he could hardly hear the noise himself.
"I think so, sir." Again a sparkle shared, as if she had said aloud: "Of
course she is, Ben Cory of Deerfield, but I must make a show of going to
find out." In her actually spoken words Ben heard a puzzling foreign
quality: the _th_ was almost a _t_. "Will you come in, Mr. Cory, the
while I inquire?" The foreign stress altered his name to something like
Cor_ee_. But she did remember him, name and all.
Clarissa showed him through the entry--he knocked over no
furniture--into a parlor dim with heavy drapes at the windows such as
Ben had never seen. Mr. Kenny liked his windows casually plain to the
world. Clarissa moved to the drapes with the grace of a wild being
incapable of clumsiness. She said: "Let's have more light."
"Thank you," Ben said. She glanced at him quickly, startled maybe by the
thanks, then flung the cloth open and lingered briefly, a golden hand
raised to the drapery, the round of her cheek lovable in the sun.
Ben realized he was rudely staring, in a sudden loss of blindness. He
automatically damned himself for shameful thoughts--he came here to call
respectfully on _Faith Jenks_!--not to yearn and lust after a slave
wench who doubtless owned not even a last name. In his confusion he
could no longer look at Clarissa. He heard her murmur some pleasant word
about sitting down and making himself at ease. She was gone, and the
room cold.
Clarissa's hand--now Ben could not even scold himself. He could not
escape the sweetness of a golden hand, pink-palmed, shining in sunlight
as a part of sunlight.
Seated and short of breath he tried furtively to clean an over-looked
fingernail with a thumbnail, an operation tinged with futility. On the
wall a sampler confronted him, not very well made--Kate would have
sniffed--asserting: _And thine ears shall hear a voice behind thee,
saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand,
and when ye turn to the left. Isaiah, xxx; 21._ Ben Cory ventured a
modest alteration in the angle of his chair.
He remembered he did not know the religion of the Jenks family; had
stupidly failed to inquire about it of Uncle John. What if Faith were
strongly devout?--it was likely. What if she discovered with shock that
he had not seen the inside of a meeting-house since coming to Roxbury?...
He fretted at the fingernail, borrowing trouble. Could a man
dissemble, hiding essential doubts from a woman if he loved her? Shabby
bargain: for my pretense, your love. He gave up the fingernail as a lost
cause, and begged the moral dilemma to go away a while.
Slowly, as it may dawn on a wanderer in the forest that he is under
examination from a thicket by the feral unconciliating eyes of a
Something--bear, catamount, Indian, he doesn't know, doesn't exactly
wish to know--so it dawned on Ben that he was being studied from the
hallway, in perfect silence, by a square lump of girl and a smaller lump
of yellowish dog.
Following her inclinations, the mother of Charity's dog might have
conceived and born a spaniel, but she must have been tempted by the
Devil in the shape of a terrier. The snuff-colored result had been
amended by years of overeating into a hairy sausage too close to the
floor. His silky ears were tolerable spaniel, his eyes all spaniel in
foolish sadness, blurred in the iris like some old human eyes. When Ben
smiled, a wag disturbed the squirrely tail; he shambled up to analyze
the smell of Ben's feet and pronounce it fair. Charity nodded. "He
worships you. I foresaw it plain. Most uncommon for Sultan to worship
anyone."
Ben studied Sultan in some alarm. He was lying on Ben's shoes, true, but
it looked more like sleep than worship. "Often he growls with
menace"--Charity approached, awkward in a shapeless brown frock that did
her no good--"the which he was prepared to do when we ambushed you."
"I'd've gone straight up in the air. A perfect ambush."
Charity planted her feet far apart and hid her hands behind her back.
"Did you play Inj'an when you was young?"
"Oh, I did, Mistress Charity, my brother and I. Used to sneak off to the
woods where we were forbidden to go, which was wrong of us."
"Why?"
"The woods were dangerous--real Inj'ans."
"I've seen real ones--not wild, though." She came nearer, not by walking
but by a side-to-side evolution of spread feet, carrying her like a
statue on small wheels. "Christian Indians, talked English all
piggedy-gulp."
"I remember an old Indian at Deerfield, supposed to be a Christian. A
Pocumtuck. Wore a cast-off bodice for a breechclout, and was alway----"
Ben remembered the failing of Captain Jenks--"was alway a little
foolish."
"Faith is dressing her hair different, the which you're obliged to
notice or she'll be in a taking, the which I think is poo."
"I'll be sure to notice it, Mistress Charity."
"Be you"--Charity jerked her head; upstairs Ben could hear a muted
ripple of women's voices--"in love with _her_?"