Shawn locked stares with him a moment, smiling, then spread his hands
and folded them again on the chair back and dropped his jaw on them,
watching the embers, alone on an island. Behind his back Mistress Gundy
was beckoning, and Shawn paid no heed as Ben stepped into the hallway
with her. "I don't suppose he means too much by his talk, Mistress
Gundy."
"Eh? Known him long?"
"Not long, not very well.... I was astonished he should speak so."
She was sniffling, patting her lips. "Let it go." In spite of the small
gust of tears she was alert and brisk. "Be you paying or him?"
"I am. How--how much?"
"Ho, and if he's not, how comes he to lay about him so?" She broke off,
laughing indulgently. "Never thee mind, Master Just Benjamin. Two such
lovely girls! Well now, if you're a-mind to buy us a wee trifle of
rum--so pleasant with a dab of butter, don't you think?--and the
girls...."
Ben re-entered the parlor with enlarged wisdom and a shrunken wallet.
The books for Reuben, lying in a chair, comforted him: at least some of
his money had been well spent.
"Don't allow her to rob you, a devil's name," said Shawn drowsily. "No
highwayman liveth but could learn jolly tricks of a bawd."
Glancing down at the alien profile, wondering in passing whether he even
liked Daniel Shawn, Ben felt disinclined to mention that the robbery, if
that was the name for it, had already taken place. He jingled the few
pence and farthings remaining, and waited, himself alone on an island
within a cavern.
She entered abruptly with good-natured bounce and giggle, plump and
moon-faced, smelling of rose-water and sweat. As she paused in the
doorway her transparent smock offered Ben a silhouette of cushiony
thighs, by her intent maybe, and then she was coming to him directly
with nothing for Shawn but a glance that might or might not have held
recognition. "There's the sweet cod," she said, and cupped Ben's chin in
her hands, and was on his lap, heavy and squirming, elastic, moist and
warm.
In Deerfield, "whore" was only a word, seldom used except in
back-of-the-barn profanity or Bible readings. It had never occurred to
Ben, but did now as Laura twitched his shirt open and rubbed a knowing
silky hand over his nipples, that a whore might be a human being, and
friendly.
Another girl, stately and yellow-haired, sat in dignity across the room
from Shawn--surely not cowlike as he had said but quite beautiful in her
stillness, conveying an impression that she was not really present. A
woman on an island. Shawn had remained in his idle sprawl, studying the
queenly repose of her like a man who might yawn any moment. "Be you
pleased with me?" Laura whispered, and nibbled Ben's ear.
"Of course." With some enterprise he found a smooth kneecap and sent his
hand exploring, since she seemed to expect it; and then he thought: Too
much of that damned ale--or maybe I'm ill--and now we must even have
buttered rum!
All the same, it was unmistakable relief when Mistress Gundy pottered
back, ahead of a gangling servant with the drinks. "Well, I'm sure,"
said the little madam--"to the Queen, God bless her!"
Laura bounced off Ben's lap at the call of patriotism. The tall quiet
girl was on her feet, and Shawn too. But as Ben staggered, finding his
leg half asleep, and drank dutifully, he was aware of a sudden annoyance
in Daniel Shawn, and saw how with the mug at his lips the man was hardly
tilting it at all. To Ben it was obscure, a thing he might tell himself
he had not seen. This stifling moment, with fat Laura's arm hugging his
loins, held no fair opportunity to think about it. But surely for all
his strange, sometimes cruel speech and wild ways, Mr. Shawn was not
disloyal--surely nobody ever refused to drink the health of Queen Anne!
Ben coughed as the cheap rum bored down his gullet. He saw Shawn grab
the wrist of the tall girl and stride out of the room with her, not a
word for courtesy. She had not even finished her drink.
"A hard man," said Mistress Gundy, comfortably stirring her mug. "Well,
I told him. Just let him mark one of my girls, just once...."
"He won't, Mother," said Laura. "Why, that time----" A sharp glance from
the old woman checked her. It held more than sharpness; they were
exchanging some wry understanding, and Ben was oppressed at feeling
himself a patronized, tiresome child. Laura tugged amiably at his arm.
"Come to my room, love?" He followed her jiggling rear down a whispering
hallway to a smaller cavern of stale roses. She had brought along the
remains of his buttered rum. "Old bawd'd finish it, did you leave it
there. A'n't she a caution, love?"
"Mm." Ben gulped a little more of it, finding it not so bad. Here the
bed was virtually everything, but Laura was fond of dolls; a dozen of
them sat about in comical attitudes, and Ben would have liked to say
something about them. "Help me drink it, won't you? I had enough."
"Nay, I had too, and too much." She patted her stomach and yawned. With
the casualness of habit, she pulled her smock up to her middle and
dropped on the bed, fat thighs comfortably wide.
Ben shoved his drink aside. In daydream, yes--he had pictured such
mindless complaisance in a woman who never quite owned a face. The
reality was no more voluptuous than a belch or a kick under the ribs.
Yet Laura was neither gross nor unclean--indeed, pretty in her overblown
way, and certainly friendly. Repelled and hypnotized, he stumbled toward
her, meeting, across the bulk of her pink flesh, a drowsy smile that
suppressed another yawn. "What's the matter, love? Be you afeared of
me?"
"Of course not."
"Ah--sweet cod--my little goat--whatever's the matter, love?" Her voice
was thick and slow, the noise of a wave, her giggle the idle foam on a
reaching wave. "Don't you know nothing, little goat?"
Ben fought with his clothes. For an instant in the candlelight the hair
was golden, not dark, the pallid skin a damask rose. Then it was fat
Laura again, nobody else--writhing, arching her heaviness, moaning, big
arms reaching for him in practised simulation of hunger as Ben groped,
struggled, and spent at the instant of contact with no pleasure, no
excitement but that of fear and no relief but that of exhaustion.
Laura cursed casually under her breath, but as she sat up she was not
noticeably angry--more amused, maybe a little concerned. "First time,
dearie?" Ben nodded in misery. "Ho, never mind! You're very young."
"God damn, I'm seventeen."
"Hey! No cursing and swearing, boy!--I can't abide it.... Did something
happen maybe? You know--spill salt at supper? Something?" She was
serious, lightly worried. Ben shook his head. "Why, there!" She pointed
at his jacket tossed on a chair, a bit of his kerchief dangling from a
pocket. "Swoonds, that's bad luck as ever was," she said, and rolled off
the bed to push the kerchief out of sight. "No bloody wonder!"
Ben knew she would take great offense if he laughed. Anyway the darkness
of a new fear was killing laughter. She sat by a little square of
wall-mirror to put her hair to rights. Ben ordered his clothes, finding
his legs too large, blurred, disobedient. Maybe the last of that
buttered rum would steady him. He gulped it down. "I'm sorry," said Ben.
"Hoo, it's a nothing, boy, happens all the time. Come again some day,"
she said, and could not resist a small parting cruelty: "When you're old
enough."
The darkness of the new fear followed him out of the room, and the name
of it was Pox.
Mistress Gundy sat as before with her rum, or somebody's rum, and nodded
to Ben, waving her puckered hand in some cryptic courtesy. Her eyes were
swimming--sad or hilarious or both. Somewhere down the hallway a woman
was whimpering rhythmically. "Top of the evening, young man. I'm bloody
mellow." Mistress Gundy patted her lips. "Going so soon? Parcel's
yonder, needn't make out I'm keeping a den of thieves."
"Thank you. Had no such thought."
"No dallying with Venus? Up and off like a little bull? I'm bloody
mellow or I wouldn't speak so free, but I say a bit of broad speech
never hurt no one, la, besides, I lived on a farm when I was a little
maid. Lord, the Surrey countryside, and I'll never see it again!" She
wept comfortably, and burped. "A'n't you waiting for your friend?"
"I must be going. Tell him I couldn't wait."
"Tsha!" She drank, her little finger thrust out for gentility. "Come
again, do. I feel sorry for you. My weakness." She held up her free hand
earnestly to detain him. "Understand? I feel like a mother to you, but
you--you--you----"
"I must be going."
"That's right, boy, turn away from an old whore.
You--you--have--not--got the least notion wha's like to be old and lorn
and forsaken, every man's bloo' hand raised against you. Have you?
Colonial. _You_ never saw no earl, not in this Godforsaken land, marry
you never. Why, one of the particular maids to 'is lady I was, and he
got it in a linen-closet, now that's no lie as your nasty-spoken Irish
friend would say. Understand?--the very self-same sheets 'er ladyship
slep' on, the mere smell of lavender can still set me a-thinking of it,
and her playing cards only two rooms away, if I'd so much as whimpered
he might've been caught what they call flagrant delicious, and you think
I'd do any such of a thing, loyal as I was? It shows your God-damned
bloody ignorance, all the same there was a time you wouldn't've turned
away."
Ben fled downstairs. The smells in the blackness of Fish Street were
fresher. He thought, as in prayer: No harm done. None at all, unless he
had caught the pox. Probably you couldn't, just from that much.
He dropped Reuben's books, his clumsiness a warning that he was drunk,
his head grown to a foggy region of rising and roaring waves. He
searched patiently for the parcel, since nothing could be done or
considered till he found it. Stooping caused a rush of blood to his
head, a tenor of collapse. He squatted, groping with clawed fingers,
found the blessed hardness of the books and gathered them up. He knew a
shrewd way to deal with this problem: he unfastened his belt, slid the
end of it under the string of the parcel, and buckled it fast. Now the
books bit his hipbone, but all was well--he would not lose them, and
the not unwelcome discomfort would keep him sober on the long journey.
The moon had not risen, or was covered by cloud. He supposed it was
still early in the evening, but something had happened to his time
sense.
Maybe, he thought, I have grown old and am too stupid to know it. Maybe
the sun will discover me with white hair. Dried like a summer apple and
no teeth. Bent on a stick, poor old Ben Cory. "Yaphoo!"
Yes, I heard that. That was me--old Cory, old Ben Cory, know him? A
public shame in the middle of the street, but who'll notice old Ben Cory
in the dark?
He advanced with precision on a street-lantern that showed him dingy
house-fronts and the filthy gutter in the middle of the road, where a
stray dog watched him sullenly, then slunk away, demoniac and lonely.
Ben observed quietly that there were no pigs: his excellent judgment had
chosen a time to walk on Fish Street when no pigs wallowed in it:
alleluia. Of course only a fool would go to shouting "Yaphoo!" in such a
place as if he were drunk, and he quite unarmed, carrying no money now
to be sure, but dressed like one who had it. "I notice here," he said,
"a fortuitous yet welcome opportunity." Stepping to the channel in the
middle of the street, he relieved himself, with embarrassment. Untidy,
but evidently in this part of town everyone did it. Startled, he
thought: Oh, fine! Oh, wonderful!--now I could, while back there....
"Yaphoo!" _There we go again!_ The rest of his comment came out as a
harmlessly soft muttering: "... 'sn't anybody remember poor old Ben
Coree, late of Deerfield?"
Someone, somewhere, not long ago, had pronounced his name in that odd
foreign way. It would be pleasant to remember about that, for it had
something to do with sunlight. Meanwhile, his breeches decently
buttoned, he was making excellent progress toward another lamp, Reuben's
books were safe, and he was utterly sober, gruesomely sober, sober as
Mr. Cotton Mather. "Sober as _all_ the mamn Dathers," said Ben, and
stumbled on something soft and screamed a little. Just a dead cat. Now
if he might walk on in this patient way, past the grim windows and
their occasional furtive gleam, he would arrive at another wholly dark
section where a man, offending no one, might run a finger down his
throat, lighten ship, and proceed.
He made it.
His stomach empty, he noted that in spite of perfect sobriety he was
still tremendously drunk, whereat he laughed, but wriggling companion
shadows to left and right of him did not. No: they were heavy-cold,
banishing all warmth of amusement; imaginary but nasty, having the
creeping urgency of sick dreams. He knew them to be imaginary in the
light of that pale flame of reason which stayed alive in him under a
long rising and subsidence of the waves, and here he asked himself
acutely: how may one diminish the force of an imaginary creation, when
naming it imaginary availeth not? Shall we assert, brethren, with
overweening impudicity, that the imagination, by its own act of
creation, hath given unto the shadow a substance akin to that which
occupieth the carnal, corporeal yaphoo?
Cannily they remained behind him, receding, if he dared turn his head,
with contemptuous ease. He knew them, though: open-eyed but dead,
trivial heads with nothing left of the body but a flabby band of hide
such as might be left by the sliding drag of an axe. Double
Indians--why? Why, because the body happens to possess a right side and
a left. "Mother, I have but to remember the look of Union Street and
Dock Square and Cornhill, and shall unquestionably know the Town House
when I arrive at it, being in no sense too foxed for such, but deliver
my mind from that page of Cicero, seeing I hurt him, heedless, heedless
continually...."
The lump in his stomach swallowed that speech, bloating. How can you
cancel a hurt when there's no way to turn back the clock?
You can't.
It happened. It's over.
"_Nempe quod hic alte demissius ille volabat----_" Ben retched, but the
lump would not come up, and he lost interest in weeping. He supposed he
ought to consider this plaguy longing to talk like a drunken man, above
all to explain, thwarted by the absence of anyone who might listen. But
wasn't that someone lounging by the faint lantern which ought to mark
the opening of Union Street? Two in fact, two women, not imaginary. He
observed them with great intelligence, their shawls and full skirts--one
tall, one short; alone in this region at night, certainly whores in
search of business, but never mind. They were animated, and as he
approached, Ben found he could explain things in an undertone which need
not disturb them.
"Hoy!" Ben thought that was the tall girl; certainly she was the one who
delivered that birdy whistle. "Looking for something?"
"Regret," said Ben. "Spent ball, just had some. Otherwise pleased and
proud, my word on it."
Both laughed obligingly. The tall girl said: "Phew! Drunk as a lord and
him na' but a boy. Feel sorry for 'm, I do."
"Someone else said that a while ago." Ben spoke stiffly, wounded. "No
occasion for it. Not worthy of sorrow in sight of God or man."
"Drunk as a lord and running on like a canting parson. It wants 'a wipe
its little nose. How they hangin', m' lud?"
But the small plump girl had stepped into Ben's path, and Ben could see
her smile was amiable, swimming and shifting in the cold light. She was
young, he thought, and pretty. "Sorry. Another time."
"Ay, but sha'n't I walk a bit way with you? You're rotten drunk, boy,
and dressed so fine, someone'll rob you."
"No money. Few farthings left."
"A stoodent, Lottie. Look at them books. Oh, do fetch 'em out, m' lud.
Read a girl bloody something, do!"
But plump Lottie said: "Leave me walk on a way with you, if you be going
by Cornhill." Not waiting for consent, she had his arm, ignoring some
under-the-breath comment from her companion, which Ben also preferred to
overlook. "That's my way too. Come on--I won't bite you, boy."
"He can read the books," said the tall girl--"between times, like."
"You're kind," Ben said. "I've often marveled how kind people can be, I
mean when one's not expecting it. My mother and father were killed at
Deerfield. I am, as you say, drunk and not speaking plain."
Lottie was keeping step somehow with his long rambling legs, the other
girl forgotten though she had sent after them a little miauling cry. Ben
tried to shorten his pace; the legs were riotously disobedient; he could
no longer think of them as trustworthy comrades; this was sad. "Drunk as
a pig," she said, and giggled warmly. "But you got a sweet face."
"It's merely a kind of good nature," said Ben judicially, disturbed by
the sin of vanity. "One can be too good-natured, now that's no lie."
"I'm good-natured too."
"You think a man and woman ought to marry if they have serious 'ligious
differences?"
"Ha? I don't know. Walk easy-don't give in to it, boy.... You're to be
married?"
"Not fitting. Do you believe in God?"
"Hoy, don't talk so loud! You're drunk."
"Yes.... Can you make up for a hurt when there's no way to turn back the
clock?"
"Now it don't do no good to cry. Come on. You can walk."
"Of course I can walk. You don't understand. It can't be done, that's
the answer. It happened. It happened in the wilderness. It's over. Goes
away from you the way the spring goes and the summer too. You think I
could cry when I saw my people killed? God damn it, if we wept for every
sufficient reason we'd've all drowned long ago. What did you say,
Lottie?"
"Nothing, boy. Come on."
"No, you said something about marrying. Did you not?" He lurched against
her and gasped an apology for clumsiness. "That's not even been spoke
of, I suppose I'm too young, but she--now pray understand, what _I_
don't understand is this: how a man could love a woman so much and
nevertheless go and--go and----"
He stopped, embarrassed, realizing that she was undoubtedly a whore, and
therefore he could not, without unkindness--through intricate labor of
thought he heard her remark: "You'll learn...." The street was a forest,
a wilderness where Ben could feel the power of snow on branches
suffering for the coming of spring, and in this jungle he was now
marvelously ready for the act of love, and had no money. "Come along,
love, come along. You live here in Boston?"
"Nay, Roxbury." He watched the pale flame of reason surviving the
onslaught of another wave. Was this forest under the sea? A wilderness
not of snow-burdened hemlock but of oozing weed, monstrous, ancient.
Here monsters lazily glided above dead ships and men unburied, a
wilderness where no spring had ever dawned since the beginning of the
world. "I don't know where he is, Lottie. The men from Hatfield buried
all the dead they could find--later in the day, you understand, after
the French were driven out, but I don't know where he lieth or my
mother. I'll go back some day, but only if my brother wishes to go with
me. Thou hast dove's eyes."
"What?"
"Thou art fair, my love."
"You _are_ drunk. I'll see you to Newbury Street if you like--that's
your way to Roxbury."
"Most kind. Oh, I wish----"
"You're drunk, and no money--remember? I'm good-natured too, but not
that good-natured. Now see can you walk without my hand."
"Of course I can," said Ben with resentment. "Was I not doing so when we
met?"
"Not too bloody well," she said, and laughed so cheerfully that he was
obliged to join in it, knowing that for a while she still walked on
beside him. At a later time, in the sedate quiet of Newbury Street, she
was gone. Ben looked back and could still see her, turning a corner,
more clearly visible than when she had been near to him. In gentle
wonder Ben observed she was slightly hunchbacked, and not young, perhaps
not much like the image his mind had drawn of her, that image no more
substantial than the shadow of a bird in passage above the leaves in a
wilderness of spring.
John Kenny said: "You might as well, Mr. Hibbs. I dare say he was
invited to dine at the Jenks', but he'll have no lantern, and I don't
like it. Take Rob Grimes with you. Of course, Reuben, you may go with
them." Mr. Kenny winced at the pain in his foot which was his common
evening companion. "He won't have been invited to stay the night--a
house guest would set poor Madam Jenks all of a doodah."
"It's my fault," said Gideon Hibbs.
Mr. Kenny grunted in pain and impatience. "Do you also take that brace
of pistols, mine and the one that was George's, they're in my bedroom
cabinet. Won't need them, but no harm in carrying them."
Reuben turned from the window, the brightness of the dining room beating
down on his mask. "I'll fetch them, sir, and I think I'll wear Ben's
knife, seeing he left it behind."
Mr. Kenny relaxed enough to chuckle. "Heh, a small army!--I pity any
malefactors in your path. Nay, 'tis only sensible. Well, go as far as
the fort anyway. The road's lighted well enough on the Boston side, but
I pray you take care passing the Neck. If my God-damned foot wasn't so
horrid bad tonight--well, get along, gentlemen! Must you stay for my
senile chattering?"
Gnarled, small, ancient and unexcited, Rob Grimes marched in front with
the lantern, a pistol jammed in his belt absurd and piratical. Mr. Hibbs
carried the other under his flapping great-coat. Eased by physical
activity, Reuben's own anxiety lessened: Ben was probably in no trouble,
Ben with his wilderness eyes and other senses, and would be sure to
relish the comic value of this escort. Presently Reuben was dubiously
enjoying the gaunt majesty of Gideon Hibbs in a three-cornered hat, and
elaborating comments for Ben's later entertainment.
Mr. Hibbs was not amused. Reuben could feel in him the intense mirthless
zeal of a sedentary soul obliged to take the responsibility for
something athletic. Maybe, Reuben speculated, a walk in the dark on the
Roxbury road did approach the borders of philosophy. He sniffed the east
wind, its wild smell of sea-wrack and approaching rain. His hand touched
Ben's beloved knife and fell away.
"Said nothing to you, Reuben, about remaining late?"