"Oh--maybe they do and I'm just foolish."
"I guess you are, but very wonderful."
Maneuvered thus against a lee shore with the broadside raking him from
bow to stern, Ben mumbled: "'Deed I'm not."
"Not poo," said Charity, sinking him....
"Do you go often to church, Mistress Charity?"
"We're Church of England."
"Oh, so was my mother."
"Then a'n't you too?"
"Well--my father was not a member of the congregation at Deerfield, and
my Uncle John is not a churchgoer, nor--nor am I."
"Um. Thought everyone was obliged to go."
"My Uncle John says it was so, years past. Now, if everyone went there
wouldn't be meeting-houses to hold 'em.... Do you like going?"
"Mr. Binyon was very wonderful."
"He is--no longer with you?"
Charity shook her head and sighed. "I do treasure his memory. He
thundered, as with the voice of many waters."
"He--uh--died?"
"Nay, he went back to England. Later they said his steps went down unto
the--that is, he joined--well, somebody. I don't just know. Mr. Mitching
is not wonderful. He whuffles. In fact he is...."
"Poo?"
Charity came quite close, and seemed perilously near to smiling. "_You_
said that--but I'll never tell. Nay, I do hold in my heart many things
that Mr. Binyon--thundered--but mustn't speak of him, and yet I do
sometimes, because everyone says I own the nature of a heedless brat."
"I don't say so."
"You are different. Mr. Binyon spoke as with the voice of angels.
Somebody said he was forty--he didn't look so terrible old.... Were all
your people killed at Deerfield, Mr. Cory?"
"My father and mother. My brother escaped, with me. He's fifteen now,
and I'm seventeen. And you?"
"Thirteen in May. A sad time--nobody will ever listen."
"You don't mean you're going to be thirteen forever?"
"Do not be poo...."
"He's a much better student than I, Reuben is."
"I can read, by the way.... Was your mother very beautiful?"
"Why--yes, Charity, she was. Everyone should be able to read."
"I thought so because you are beautiful."
"Now, Charity! You ought not----"
"I know. Alway, everything wrong."
"Not that, but--oh, never mind.... What do you like to read?"
"Not romances. Faith reads those, by the way."
"I've read but a few." In Mr. Kenny's helter-skelter library, Ben had
had a glimpse of Aphra Behn and her long-winded imitators; he had
rather enjoyed the swashbuckling of _Oroonoko_. "Our tutor keeps us so
hard pressed with the classics we can't read much else."
"Um ... Mr. Cory, is it true that swallows spend the winter at the
bottom of frozen ponds and streams all naked of any feathers?"
"Nay, I've heard that but don't believe it. They must go south like so
many others and return in the spring."
"Um. All the same I drew a picture of some of them under the water all
naked of any feathers, and another on the brink--he hath just risen and
put his feathers on again." She gulped and stuck out a blunt jaw. "I
draw many pictures, when I ought to be sewing. I like cooking if I can
cook what I like."
"But sewing is poo?"
"You too would think so, had you been obliged to do it. Would you wish
to behold the picture I made of swallows under the water all naked of
any feathers and one on the brink?"
"Yes, I would, Charity."
She whirled like a doll on a revolving pole and marched away. Sultan
moaned and followed, a slave to duty with a backward glance of apology.
Ben heard other footsteps and rose, too soon, and bowed--too soon, so
that he was bent in the middle when Faith entered, grave and shining and
young, preceded by the bulk of Madam Prudence Jenks, who clearly did not
expect a hand to be kissed or shaken but held both pale things curled
below the twin billows of her bosom and entered the room thus, rather
like an angel looking for breakfast, and allowed Faith to help her into
a chair, and loomed in it, rather like an angel disappointed but willing
to wait. "'Tis most agreeable of you, Mr. Carey, to call upon us in our
simple afflicted seclusion."
Uncle John hadn't mentioned that the Jenks family was secluded,
afflicted, or simple. The drowned gaze of Madam Jenks suggested she had
risen from a rest of ages under water, for the purpose (imposed on her
by others) of viewing Benjamin Cory; if he proved not too detestably in
need of correction, she might submerge. Ben mumbled how happy he was to
meet her. For all their damp opacity, her prominent eyes were not at
all blind.
Faith's gold-brown hair lay in soft spirals above her ears; on the coils
rested a cap, no such cap as Puritan custom approved but a trifle of
frivolous lace--the Mathers would have hated it as one of the stigmata
of popery. Her dress today was dead-leaf brown. To Ben it looked
uncomplicated and demure, its very plainness encouraging the eye to
rejoice in what it held. Surely _she_ could never become gross and
overblown, the damask fading to an underwater bleach, dugs swollen to
down pillows!
"How charmingly you've done your hair, Mistress Faith!"
"Oh, la, thank you, sir--I merely toss it together so to have it out of
the way." (And thank _you_, Charity!) Hands chastely folded, Faith
watched him with unmistakable radiance; as Ben dared to meet her eyes
she blinked both of them. Ben's heart floated over shining fields. He
must have said the right thing. In fact, as matters looked now he could
perfectly well sit down; it might even be expected of him.
With larger sternness Madam Jenks repeated: "Most kind of you to call,
Mr. Carey, seeing we have not been much about since our loss, the which
one must suffer with fortitude required of us by the Lord in his
infinite mercy, very kind of you." A parchment contraption appeared
magically in her hand; she fanned the pallid orb of her face in a motion
grave and hypnotic.
Faith patted her mother's arm where folds of baby-creases narrowed to a
tiny wrist. "Mama, I think Mr. Cory never met Uncle James." Faith's
charming double wink instructed Ben not to be even slightly dismayed by
sudden Uncle James: she would see him through.
A red enameled comb projected from Madam Jenks' tight-bound hair like
the comb of a hen, bobbing so unstably that Ben's anxiety climbed notch
after notch. "He did not know James?" Madam Jenks shook her head, but
nothing happened. "A pity, seeing he was ever a worthy influence to
young and old and would have profited much by knowing him, but God
disposes." Pronouns, Ben noted, counted for no more than ripples, to be
brushed aside by the lady under full sail. Solidly abeam of him, cutting
his wind and threatening to broach him just when he was trying to claw
off to windward, she seemed to be conveying a message: that Benjamin
Cory or Carey must have found it extraordinary difficult to maintain the
Christian virtues with no assistance from Uncle James.
"My father's brother-in-law," Faith interpreted. "He died last year, Mr.
Cory. Mamma thought you might have met him."
"Hadn't the honor, ma'am. I'm sorry to learn of your affliction."
"He resteth in the Lord," said the fat woman, and beamed. "Lived in
Cambridge. I trust your grandfather is well?"
"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 pronounce 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 shift 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."