"I could present you. Maybe a word from him would be of use?"
Shawn shook his head again and murmured: "The thought is kind, but look
again, the way the time's inauspicious. Mr. Dyckman is the worse for
drink, Beneen. Some other time."
Ben looked again, astonished, to find Jan Dyckman gazing directly at him
without recognition, eyes rigid and damp. The eyes moved jerkily away
and with dignity viewed a coin that Mr. Dyckman would have liked to
raise from a wet spot on the bar. He must have been drinking elsewhere,
to be so far gone. Abruptly Shawn was asking: "Have you ever had a
woman?"
"Why, no, I--no, Mr. Shawn."
"And don't I remember that time of life, the ache of it? Ah, steady as
she goes!--the fear too, boy, but devil any need of that. I'll take you
to a house, and you agreeing."
"I--don't know. I suppose I ought to start soon for home."
Shawn seemed not to hear. "It's orderly is the place I'm thinking of,
above a cordwainer's on Fish Street and next door to a grog shop, the
which is convenient. Four girls and the madam--O the fine flow of
conversation in her cups! She's that rambling you wouldn't know the
thing she'd say. I'd have you hear how she was betrayed by an earl in
London town, the way I'm thinking she was never no closer to England
than a comfortable pile of sacking, maybe forninst a warehouse on one of
the wharfs out yonder, but it's the fair fine tale." Ben fidgeted. "As
for the rest, Beneen, a stallion will need but a moment to cover a
willing mare, and in such a house they are willing. I recall a half-ugly
wench who would be doing anything you like at all." Shawn laid a finger
along his old-ivory pockmarked nose and smiled diamond-like. "I had her
once--wasn't it like sinking into a warm dumpling fresh from the oven?
One of the others is handsome but cowlike--I'm a-mind to try her, though
I fear she'll be watching a spot on the ceiling and do no more for a
man's entertainment than if he was a wind at the door."
Ben pressed damp hands on the table to check a shaking in them, knowing
with exasperation that Shawn must have seen it. Vague sounds at the bar
gave him an excuse to turn away. Tom Ball and Jan Dyckman were leaving,
Dyckman moving like a giant wooden doll, every step a separate
achievement. When at length Ben turned back it seemed to him--but
everything now was confused, the ale in him mumbling
I-will-I-will-not--it seemed to him that Daniel Shawn was settling in
his chair as if he too had just swung about, or risen perhaps, resuming
his former position in the same moment when the one-eyed scarecrow stood
up (not drunk at all) and stalked in the wake of Ball and Dyckman out of
the tavern.
As he passed Ben's table the thin man shot one downward glance. To Ben
in the cold-hot worry of I-will-I-will-not it was like being jabbed by
an icicle, and he could not even summon his wits to think about it, for
Shawn was saying kindly: "It's the fresh air you need, Beneen, and I'm
thinking of the old saying, a man's not quite a man till he's tried that
bit of a doorway. So shall we go?"
* * * * *
Reuben left the cottage with the green shutters before the sun had
entered the smudge of horizon clouds. He took the path across the back
fields, his muscles lazy with the spring, his mind blazing.
Mr. Welland had not appeared surprised that Reuben should wish to study
his art. He had not probed for motives; had not even inquired whether
such ambition harmonized with Mr. Kenny's plans; had offered no large
generalities of grave counsel. Alertness was the word: as though the
doctor had caught something more than Reuben's words, and must listen
sharply within his own universe to interpret the message.
Reuben had lived through a heavy time while Mr. Welland gazed at the
completed chess game, his monkey face a stillness. Then--"Yes," said Mr.
Welland, "you and I must be friends. Yet I have never taught...."
The doctor spent much time laying the chessmen away in their plain box,
the stillness remaining, his lips pursed, a dim frown coming and going.
He carried the box to a drawer of a battered cabinet, then stood before
the single bookcase in his surgery, stoop-shouldered, elderly, pinching
his small chin with thumb and forefinger. "Mm-yas--Vesalius. Not the
most recent but still the best." He spread the tall book open on his
desk. With the appearance of impatience he nodded for Reuben to come to
him.
"This is a man," said Amadeus Welland. "You've glimpsed him, clad in
garments, and in a skin--itself an organ of first importance, but forget
it for the moment and look on him here, flayed. You can imagine, I
suppose, what these are--these flowing, overlapping bands?"
"Muscles, surely?"
"Yes. Place your left hand by your right armpit, here, now draw your
right arm leftward; what bunches under your fingers is this, here in the
drawing, and the name of it is _Pectoralis major_, and you may find some
little trouble in remembering it."
"I will try to remember it."
"I am glad you said 'try.' I have spent fifty-three years striving to
overcome that vanity wherewith all men are born. You'll also try, and
succeed, in remembering the names of all the other muscles in this
drawing, and in this one where the fella turns you his flayed back, and
in all these other drawings further on. You will reflect that muscles,
while of major importance, are not more important than all the organs
that live below them in their manifold occasions--since these also you
must remember, all of them, their names, their functions so far as we
know them, the many changes that will affect them in youth and age,
sickness and health. Here, for example, is the diagram of the bony frame
that bears us. When my own studies began I had first to learn these
bones--all of them, naturally, their names, position, function whether
in action or repose--mm-yas, as you will. I do recall my teacher once
struck me across the face with a dry bone called the radius--this
one--because I called it the ulna, for the which I later praised
him--with reservations."
"Reservations, sir?"
"It was possible for him," said Mr. Welland lightly, and took snuff. "It
would not be possible for me to strike--a student. Fi-_choo_-shoo! And
here, sir, is a representation of the human heart...."
When Reuben next glanced at the clock in Mr. Welland's surgery, another
hour had passed. "There will be times," said Mr. Welland, removing a
gray cat from a cushion on a three-legged stool by the western window,
where she had slept through the lesson, so that he might sit on the
stool himself with the late sun behind his shoulder--"times, I guess,
when your eyes grow tired in candlelight; other times when you'd much
prefer to go outside and play--as you must do fairly often, but not of
course at times when you're unable to remember, for example, _all_ the
occasions when laudanum may be given and those when it may not. And so
on, Reuben, and so on and so on--I've merely mentioned a few things that
come first to mind," said Mr. Welland, and rubbed his eyes. Reuben could
not see his face very clearly against the light....
Crossing the back fields, Reuben passed through a clump of trees, and
from the other side could look across a better-known field to the roof
of Mr. Kenny's house. He leaned against a beech, discovering that he was
hungry, that it would be enjoyable to pester Kate for something
unauthorized in advance of supper. The wind had shifted behind him, now
easterly; the broad hard body of the beech was a friend.
There was too much: Reuben knew he could not immediately bring order to
any such welter of new impressions and discoveries. Hungry, yes, but let
that wait; and the questions about himself that he had timorously
half-intended to ask Mr. Welland--let them wait too. Too much for
now--like a runner exhausted, he must rest, and was even reluctant to go
on to the house. Better for the moment only to stand here in the
failing daylight, friendly with the beech and needing (for the moment!)
no other friend.
Rising from that stool, disturbing the cat again and taking pencil and
paper at his desk, Mr. Welland had made a few light loving strokes.
"You draw with great skill, sir."
"Thank you--practice. And this woman's breast I have drawn--beautiful,
you would say?"
"Yes, it is."
"Yes, I should think so, to anyone, although I fear my poor sketch
claims only accuracy and not art. But 'tis beautiful, as you say, the
thing itself--maketh one to think of the lover's kiss, or of a child's
mouth here drinking life." He began another drawing. "This is what I
have seen not once but too many times, when this organ is afflicted with
certain kinds of destroying tumor." Reuben watched, shaken and sickened
but refusing to turn away until the doctor sat back from his desk,
murmuring: "You understand, Mr. Cory, I am merely trying to frighten and
demoralize you with selected scraps of truth."
"I killed a wolf once," said Reuben Cory, refusing to look away.
"Tell me of that."
Reuben told of it, reluctant to meet the doctor's look because of what
the man had said a while ago about vanity, but finding no great
difficulty in the telling. After all it was not brag. It had happened.
"I shall speak to Mr. Kenny," said Amadeus Welland. "Perhaps an
apprenticeship? Or better a year or so of preparation, to determine for
yourself if this be really what you wish, in such time as may be allowed
from your other studies--which are not to be neglected, Reuben, not
ever, you understand? Show me a man of medicine who hath found himself
too busy for other fields of learning, and you will have shown me an
educated damned fool."
"I can't----"
"Reuben, if thanks be appropriate, let them wait. I may have done thee
no service. I have only pointed out one or two signposts on a most
heartbreaking journey. But if that is the way you will go--I am
fifty-three, Reuben, not very successful and not at all loved here in
Roxbury--if that is the way you will go, I'll go with you as far as I
may."
* * * * *
Ben Cory ducked his head to clear the doorframe, unused even yet to
being rather tall, following Daniel Shawn with the precarious poise of a
man of the world. The room in many ways resembled a cavern, its air
stale-scented and much used, with bat-rustlings from other chambers. The
shriveled woman squeezed his damp hands, twittering, her pink cheeks
like summer apples as they look after a winter in the cellar, powdery
and dull within but retaining a characteristic cloying sweetness. "Any
friend of yours, Mr. Shawn--ooh, look at the great gray eyes of him!"
Mistress Gundy patted the pleat of her lips every moment or two, maybe
enjoying a silent burp. "What do I call you, dearie?" She trotted away
with small bobbing steps, to plump into an armchair and smile and sigh.
"Cat's got his tongue, la. So he loseth nothing else, no harm done, ha,
Mr. Shawn? What do I call the pretty young gentleman that's lost his
pretty tongue, Mr. Shawn? Won't have anything lost in _my_ place, and me
trying so hard to keep everything agreeable, ha, Mr. Shawn?"
"Just Benjamin," said Shawn, and straddled a chair, watching the old
woman with somber upturned eyes, a darkness in him. Ben thought, with
alcoholic irrelevance, that if Shawn were to reach out and squash poor
Mistress Gundy with a twist of a sailor's thumb, she would pop like any
defenseless bug, but none of them need be astonished, Mistress Gundy
least of all. But at one time she had been a child, a growing maid....
"Just Benjamin will do," said Shawn, and spat in the fireplace.
"Oh, marry will he, I'm sure." Mistress Gundy giggled and remained
genteel.
"Anything new here, Nanny?"
"A'n't it alway new, Mr. Shawn?"
"That it is not, and never was unless maybe for Adam, the poor sod, and
for a boy the first time but not the second. Nanny, I'm wanting Laura
for the boy. For meself I don't care--anything that'll bear me weight a
moment."
"_Mister_ Shawn, such a manner of conversation! Will you not mend, sir?"
He only looked at her. "Well, Master Just Benjamin, dearie, Laura it
shall be, and she so fresh and lovely, I'm sure, you'll be most content,
I'm sure."
Ben cleared his throat, mindful of Shawn's rambling advice in the
evening street. "Would you wish something to drink, Mistress Gundy, that
we might have sent up from next door?"
"Nay, I knew he'd find it, and with pleasant speech!" She cut her eyes
at Shawn to make that a reproach, but he was remote, observing only the
embers, or the South Pacific. "Well, dearie, 'tis early on in the
evening for it, but since you speak of it and so pleasantly, a trifle to
wet the whistle would not go amiss." She patted her lips. "For my part,
sir, ever since I resided in London I have been partial to a bit of hot
buttered rum of a chilly evening, to settle the rifting-up and keep out
the cold. It's the Boston air, sir. Never do I grow accustomed to it,
that I never."
"Yes," said Ben.
"I'll send the servant," said Mistress Gundy, and rose, about to potter
away.
"Do you send him," said Shawn to the embers, "but bring in the wenches
before he returns, Nanny, else you'll be rambling on from here to
hereafter and we biting the curbing of the stall, God damn it, with
nothing to mount."
"Mr. Shawn, sir, one day your tongue'll turn and bite you, sir."
"Then I'll have thee kiss the place, old woman." She sidled for the
doorway, out of reach of his lazy hand. "But wait till I bleed."
"I marvel the sweet young gentleman ever took up with you, sir, you that
come in with a smile and stay with a curse."
"Took up with me to see a bit of the world, Nanny, the way the world's a
troublesome thing for a boy to see at all and I'm part of it. Come give
us a kiss!"
"You leave me tell you this: you mark one of my poor girls on the face
just once, just once, Mr. Shawn----"
"And you'll have law on me belike?"
"Though it be the ruin o' me I'll say it: I think you're a wicked man,
Mr. Shawn."
"But not on the face is well enough?"
"Mr. Shawn!"
"Come now, give us a kiss and be friends!"