Kate was fluttering. "He's at breakfast, my dear."

Reuben intervened, startled as she abruptly swung to him, a miniature

whirlwind with sea-blue eyes. Some blurred yellowish phenomenon passed

her feet--a dog apparently, not relevant unless Mr. Eccles should choose

that moment to come downstairs. "I'll take you to him," Reuben said, and

Kate relaxed at the authority of a man in the house.

"You are Mr. Cory's brother."

"Madam, the charge is well founded."

"This," said Charity, "is no time for schoolboy levity."

"Ow-ooh!" said Reuben, and stood to attention by the dining-room doorway

as Charity passed, and the dog. In a woolgathering way, the animal

acknowledged Reuben's feet, but had no time for them. It was mere

carelessness, not sin, that made Reuben leave the door open as he

followed Charity with all the meekness of Sultan.

Pleased and then alarmed, Mr. Kenny jumped up, winced at his bad foot

and clutched the table-edge. "Charity, my dear, what lucky wind----"

"Sir, Faith said I'd best be the one to bring word, seeing Mama is

prostrated and--and so--so I----" she lapsed into stuttering confusion

and stamped her foot in rage at her own behavior.

"Breathe slow, my dear," said the old man, no longer smiling. "Count to

four, my dear, then to eight by twos. Now: two, four, six----"

"Eight, ten, twelve," said Charity, and shuddered. "Pray don't be

prostrated, Mr. Kenny, the way Mama said you was sure to be. I'd not

know what to do."

"Now sit thee down," said John Kenny. "I shall undertake not to be

prostrated, and a'n't thy bonnet-strings a little tight?"

Standing by her chair, Reuben briefly recalled the sensation of living

as a pigmy in a world of giants. "Mama saith, never no such thing

happened here in all her time. My father--he--well, when they brought

the news he heard something and came downstairs, but he--but he...."

Reuben noticed her fists pressing on the table. On impulse he lifted one

of them. "Allow me," said Reuben, urging the fingers to open and relax.

They did so, as Charity stared up at him in a trance of observation. He

patted the hand and set it back on the table. "I think, Charity, my

Uncle John would prefer not to have bad news broken gently. Am I right,

sir? Better to hear it quick and plain?"

"Much better." John Kenny spoke absently, watching him and not Charity,

who would have accomplished her errand then, Reuben guessed, but hell

broke loose.

Reuben glimpsed the preliminary tableau--Sultan in the doorway, frozen

in unbelieving horror at a ball of golden evil which advanced on stiff

legs directly toward his nose. Reuben had time to lay a private wager

entirely in favor of Mr. Eccles, but was too late for anything else--the

golden ball rose up straight, reversed itself in mid-air, and dropped on

Sultan's back with the ineluctable certainty of the Puritan Hell.

"Oh!" Charity cried. "Oh, the horrid beast!" She jumped up on her chair,

maybe to see better. "Sultan, stop it!"

Sultan would have loved to, if he could. John Kenny swung up his aging

feet as the storm swept by.

Reuben followed.

"Sultan!" Charity wailed. "Come here this instant! Sultan, shame!

Abusing that poor cat!"

Mr. Kenny lifted his feet again.

Reuben followed.

A chair toppled over. If Sultan had nourished any hopes at all, they had

centered around that chair. He might, like Milton's Lucifer, have had

none--_Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell...._ Reuben followed,

dimly aware of his brother in the doorway and Kate Dobson behind him,

both shouting encouragement. Uncle John seemed rather happy too, but was

preparing to lift his feet a third time. Reuben observed that everyone,

in fact, was laughing except himself, and he would too if he could only

_gain_ a little.... At last he was able to swoop down and grasp the

loose skin of a rigid yellow neck. He hoisted it; Sultan shot away from

under it. A good deal of Sultan's hair came up on the claws, but the

essential dog was then able to flee under Charity's chair and leave all

the rest to the judgment of history.

Reuben secured Mr. Eccles' threshing hind legs and bore him to the

kitchen door. Ben dived to open it for him, doubled over and hooting but

aware of the flashing forepaws.

"Ben!" said Mr. Kenny--"Ben, you a'n't got sea-room. You, Reuben, I mean

Mr. Cory, do you tack a mite to la'board--la'board, sir! There--now,

Ben, now you can cross his bow."

"'Sbody!" said Kate. "I wouldn't trade 'im for a mastiff!"

"Best not leave him alone out there, Kate," said Mr. Kenny. "You hear

that?" Reuben had flung Mr. Eccles into the kitchen and closed the door

just in time, but he could be heard marching up and down, blaspheming.

"He's lonely, the little thing."

Kate bounced away whooping. Mr. Kenny wiped his eyes and finished a

buttered bun. "I suppose," said Reuben, "it happens to the best of

dogs."

"Why," said Charity, "he was overtaken by surprise."

"Of course he was," said Mr. Kenny. "Come, Sultan! Come here, boy, good

boy!" Mr. Kenny chirped, but though Sultan was willing to explain

everything in a long undertone, he was not at the moment coming

anywhere, for anyone.

Charity exploded in fresh cries. "I can't stop laughing!" she wept, and

dropped her head on the table. "I can't _stop_ it!" Mr. Kenny bent over

her, concerned; her laughter had gone shrill and sick. "Dreadful news,

and I--I _can't stop laughing_! Help!"

For Reuben, the worst of Mr. Eccles' dangerous writhing had not obscured

a second's glimpse of Charity in the moment when she discovered that Ben

was in the room. Under cover of her wailing laughter he muttered in

Ben's ear: "Can't you see she loves you? Do something!"

He knew Ben did not quite understand nor believe it, but Ben took an

uncertain step toward the chair where Charity struggled with the demons

of her laughter, and that was enough. Charity flung herself at him.

Reuben saw his brother's arms close around her with a natural kindness,

and heard him say: "Now, now! What's the matter, Mistress Charity?"

"Cousin Jan--Mr. Dyckman." She spoke quietly into Ben's shirt, all

laughter spent.

"Dyckman?" John Kenny came to them, and touched her shoulder lightly, as

if it might burn him. "What of Mr. Dyckman, my dear?"

"He is dead."

"Dead! But----"

Her cheek over Ben's heart, Charity was able now to deliver plainly and

bleakly the words she must have rehearsed a dozen times during the

journey in the coach. "The men of the watch discovered him in an alley

off Ship Street a little before dawn. Faith bade me take the coach,

seeing you might wish to return in it with me. Our servant Clarissa is

seeing to the house while Faith cares for Mama, so--none to send but

me."

"Of course, my dear," said Mr. Kenny vacantly. "I'll go with thee at

once." Mr. Hibbs had come down for breakfast, but stood apart gloomily,

apparently not presuming to hope that anyone would explain matters to

him. "I'll go with thee, and--and my two sons."

"I was to say, sir, that the Constable Mr. Derry hath undertook to be at

your office at the warehouse this forenoon, and will summon back the men

of the Select Watch if you wish to question them."

"Mr. Derry?--the watch? What art thou saying, Charity? Mr. Dyckman was

murdered?"

"I alway do _everything_ wrong!" Charity mourned, but Ben patted her

shoulder and she quieted again. "Yes, and they said, sir, his wallet was

gone--some footpad of the water front, but Mama will have it that it was

the French. She will have it that Frenchmen are a-prowl in the streets

of our neighborhood seeking opportunity to murder my father and herself.

Could--could it be so?"

"It could not," said Mr. Kenny, and managed a wavering laugh. "Your

mother is fanciful."

"She speaks of selling our Clarissa, and away from Boston, for that

Clarissa was bred and born in Guadeloupe."

John Kenny snorted; Reuben hoped he was recovering his firmness. "I

trust Mr. Jenks will forbid any such thing--meaning no disrespect to

your mother, Charity."

Charity sighed, burrowing her nose deeper. Reuben supposed that for her

the worst was over. She went on in a brittle but steady monotone:

"Cousin Jan--Mr. Dyckman was--they said he was yet alive when he was

found, and must have been lying there untended for many hours, for blood

was dry on his garments."

"Alive? Could he speak then?"

"He told the watch his name. And then begged that he might speak with my

father, and said somewhat more of justice being done, and they said he

commended his soul unto God, and there was some other word, but not

clear, and when they would lift him to carry him the blood came up in

his mouth, they said, and he choked, and died. He was stabbed, they

said, stabbed in the back, stabbed in a dozen places."

* * * * *

Constable Malachi Derry, a sad man with excellent muscle disguised by a

concave chest, a willowy neck and a jaw like a pick-axe, commonly

described himself as slow to wrath, but he could be angry, and Ben saw

that he was now, as he drooped on a three-legged stool in Mr. Kenny's

office and tried to find space for surplus leg where the uncompromising

feet of Captain Peter Jenks allowed not another inch of it and would not

budge. Mr. Derry was a ship chandler by trade. Chosen for the thankless

position of constable, he had done his level New England best to wriggle

out of it, until informed by Governor Dudley himself that he would

serve, or else pay a fine of not less than ten pounds, possibly more.

Faced with that, Mr. Derry did the next best thing--tried to be a good

constable.

It came hard, leaving him scant time for his rightful labors. He must

waste hours in the courts, bustle about serving warrants, seeing to the

daytime peace of his district, while the chandlery went to ruin. On the

Sabbath, engaged in preventing others from ungodliness, how could he

find proper time to look to his own soul? The supplementary emoluments,

in view of the damage to his trade, were dem'd low. Besides, the work

was dangerous. Still trying to find room for his legs, he rumbled on to

a peroration: "I was compelled, Mr. Kenny, to say this morning to Madam

Dyckman herself, poor woman: 'We do what we may, more we cannot.' I have

heard Judge Sewall himself declare that disorder increaseth continually,

but doth the power of my office increase also? Not at all, sir, the

while this very air of the water front, as it were, spawns evildoers,

the cutthroat, the footpad, the blasphemer, the piratically

inclined--mostly foreigners, you understand."

"I understand," said John Kenny, "that you hold out small hope of

discovering the ruffian who hath murdered the mate of my ketch _Artemis_

and so taken from me and my captain a good friend."

Captain Jenks slammed his fist down on his knee and said nothing. To Ben

this morning he was almost unrecognizable as the same man who had come

ashore in a flood of sunlight. His whole broad face was darkly flushed,

the red skin raddled with a thousand lines. When his thick hands were

not jumping like those of an old man with the palsy, a fine tremor

possessed them. Bags hung like flabby udders below his bloodshot blue

eyes, and the eyes were cold with wrath and confusion: a man goaded by

much pain, unable to understand the source of it; a stricken leviathan

unable to see the harpoon that has pierced it.

"That's true," said Mr. Derry--"small hope, I fear. You understand, sir,

a cobblestone takes no footprint, a knife-blade leaves no signature. We

know he was scurvily set upon, robbed, slain. But are you aware, sir,

there may be as many as two or three hundred evil livers in and about

the city who might have done this, and for no reason but the scent of

whatever money or goods he had upon him?"

"Well..." Mr. Kenny rested his head on his shriveled hands. Reuben had

drawn up a chair to sit by him at the desk, unbidden except by a silent

glance that Ben had seen. Lounging across the room, Ben felt the

coolness of the light, always dusty in this small office, pouring over

their faces, the old man and the boy, the sick man and the well-meaning

officer of the law. The stirring of pain within himself was so vague he

could not know whether it was a foolish jealousy because Uncle John had

sent that message to Reuben and not to him, or merely that unreasonable

stab of loneliness which may assail any person at certain times. "Well,"

said Mr. Kenny, "I see no profit in summoning the watch. I take it, Mr.

Derry, you've told us everything Mr. Dyckman was able to say before he

died?"

"I think so, sir. Sadly little, seeing he was in the last extremity. He

spoke his name, he begged to be taken to Captain Jenks. All of the men,

sir, heard him say: 'God's will be done!' And as they were endeavoring

to lift him, Mr. Dyckman did speak some word of his wife and children,

but the men could scarce hear it, and that was all."

Ben fidgeted. He knew he should have spoken during the journey from

Roxbury; Charity's distracted presence had restrained him. When they

left her at home and the Captain took her place in the coach, certainly

he ought to have spoken. Captain Jenks had made a difficult and vaguely

courageous thing of the journey from the house steps to the coach,

winning each step like an old man, his face rigid, red and terrible.

Waiting in the coach and looking the other way, Uncle John had murmured

to Ben: "Don't offer your hand to aid him into the seat." And once the

Captain was installed there, Ben had barely room to breathe, let alone

speak. But now in the slightly less crowded office he managed to blurt

out: "Uncle John...."

The old man looked up at him dimly, and Reuben searched him with a gaze

of intentness like a sword. Malachi Derry wheeled about to observe him

with that kind of tight patience that operates like a thumb in the eye.

Captain Jenks alone paid him no attention; earlier he had acknowledged

Ben's existence with a grunt, Reuben's not at all.

"Yes, Ben?" said Uncle John.

"I saw Mr. Dyckman yesterday evening. I ought to have spoke sooner, but

didn't wish to distress little Charity further." They simply waited;

even Captain Jenks was looking at him now, his attention caught perhaps

by Charity's name. "I met Mr. Shawn by chance, and he seemed to wish my

company, so we went to dine at--I think the Lion is the name of it, a

tavern on Ship Street."

"Well, young man," said Mr. Derry, "I know the place, the which----"

Jenks interrupted as if Derry were a plaguy noise in the street: "Shawn?

Who a devil's name is Shawn?"

Mr. Kenny said rather sharply: "I know him, Peter. Let the boy tell it.

Why--you met Mr. Shawn yourself, I remember, the afternoon you came

ashore. He was with us at the wharf."

"Oh, that--yah." Jenks rubbed his face wearily and subsided.

"Go on, Ben."

"Well, sir, only that Mr. Dyckman came to that tavern while we were

there, and was drinking rum with the new bosun Tom Ball, and--had

evidently been drinking already for some time. He was very foxed."

"Jan Dyckman? Are you certain, Ben?"

"Of course, sir. Mr. Shawn noticed it too. I had the thought he might

wish me to introduce him to Mr. Dyckman, but Mr. Shawn said nay, let it

be another time, for Mr. Dyckman was not himself. In fact, Uncle John,

he looked directly at me without recognition, though he knows me well

enough. Knew me, I suppose I must say."

Captain Jenks was staring down into his hands as if wondering why they

were empty. To them he said ponderously: "Jan seldom drank, and when he

did could always hold his liquor like a man. Shit, I don't believe it."

"Peter, my boy Benjamin is not an inventor of tales."

"Tell him," said Jenks--Ben might have been in Roxbury--"tell him to

spend more time with the futtering books, and less with silver-tongued

bloody idlers and Irish at that."

"Mr. Jenks"--that was Reuben, an ugly softness such as Ben had never

before heard in his light adolescent baritone--"you are doing an

injustice, to my brother certainly, and perhaps to Mr. Shawn."

Jenks turned slowly to examine him, as one who wished to ask: Who a

devil's name are you? Beside Reuben's cold furious face was the waiting

quiet of Mr. Kenny. The Captain's wrath appeared to fade, a fire he

could not be troubled to sustain. "D'you tell me the same, John?"

"I do."

"Then I am sorry, and will retract what I said, and hope no offense was

taken."

"None, sir," said Ben quickly, inwardly very greatly offended; but Peter

Jenks was Faith's father, and was at present (as Uncle John would have

said) not his own man.

Mr. Derry, evidently fatigued from the labor of saying nothing, now

mildly and respectfully asked: "Had you more to tell, Mr. Cory?"

"There was one thing," said Ben, but stopped at a knocking on the

office door, and after a nod from Uncle John opened it.

Daniel Shawn was very clean, fresh, brisk. He smiled at Ben, not with

any smirk of conspiracy or other reminder of the night, but openly and

amiably. "Good morning, Ben--but it's not the good morning, now that's

no lie." He turned at once to Mr. Kenny. "Sir, don't be slow to tell me

if I intrude. I heard, sir--the water front is talking of nothing else

the day. I wished to say, if there be anything I might do, I owe you

some service, Mr. Kenny, if only for your kindness and hospitality the

other night, and you may call on me for anything it's in my power to do

at all."

"That's kind," said Mr. Kenny vaguely.

Mr. Derry got his legs loose at last, and moved to lean against the

door, by that rambling action somehow making them all his prisoners of

the moment. The room had been crowded before--Captain Jenks made any

closed space seem so; now, with Daniel Shawn lean and large in his green

coat, and Mr. Derry obscurely grown in stature, the little place was

stifling as a shut box. "Who are you, sir?"

"Daniel Shawn, seaman. And you?"

"I am Malachi Derry, and Constable. Your name was mentioned but now, Mr.

Shawn. I understand you dined yesterday evening with Mr. Cory here, at

the Lion Tavern on Ship Street?"

"Oh, I did that," said Mr. Shawn lightly. "And later, Mr. Kenny, I

feared maybe I had presumed, but sir, the boy and I were both at a loose

end, you might say, and most pleasant conversation we had, and no harm

in it, I hope?"

"Oh, none," said John Kenny, groping at something in his mind. "I wish

Ben might have let me know, but that's unreasonable of me, for I don't

know how he could, seeing I left early for Roxbury. Ben, you had

something more to tell?"

"Yes, and I'm glad Mr. Shawn is here, for he'll remember it too. There

was a man seated at the back of the tavern when Mr. Shawn and I went in,

a total stranger, a one-eyed man I'd know again if I saw him, no matter

how far away, and--oh, it can't be important, only a feeling I had----"

"Now I will judge of that," said Malachi Derry, and came alive, leaning

away from the door with the sudden monstrous tension of a cat who has

just sighted a wriggle in the grass. "A one-eyed man?"

"Ay, a black patch, over the left eye. And the only reason I mention

him, sir, is that when Mr. Dyckman and Ball left the place, this man

rose at once and followed them out, but until then he had been sitting

idle with the flies gathered on his empty trencher, and when I first saw

him I had a feeling that he was--oh, waiting for something."

Captain Jenks shook his head in grim disgust.

"The left eye, Mr. Cory? You are certain?"

"Yes, Mr. Derry, the left eye. He was--not the common sort. I'd know him

again, anywhere. Shabby clothes, black, patched. Tall, thin, a gray

diagonal scar across the back of his right hand, and on his face a mad

fixed smile such as I never saw on any man before."

"Oh, come!" said Captain Jenks. "May we not have the precise height of

this hobgoblin, in inches and fractions?"

John Kenny said carefully: "Mr. Derry, I have sometimes walked with Ben

in the woods. Though an old man, I did not know until then how much the

human eye can grasp." Ben warmed within; he saw Reuben smile as if the

small triumph were his own. "You may take it, Mr. Derry, it was the left

eye, and with this pencil--catch, Ben!--he can draw you an accurate

sketch of the diagonal scar."

"No need," said Mr. Derry softly, examining the ceiling, a little

relaxed. "I happen to know of mine own knowledge, the description is

just." His gaze wandered here and there, and settled on Daniel Shawn.

"Did you also see this man?"

Shawn considered with gravity. "I think I noticed some such person when

we entered. I recall I sat facing the front of the tavern. I didn't

notice him leaving, but if it's Beneen says he left soon after Mr.

Dyckman, then sure he did."

"But," said Ben--"oh, I remember. When he passed our table, Mr. Shawn,

you'd just then leaned to the fireplace, and likely never saw him. One

other thing I remember, Mr. Derry--nay, but it was only a feeling of

mine, and of no importance----"

"Tell me anyway," said the Constable.

"Why, only that when he passed our table, he looked at me, just one

quick look from his one eye, and--I can't explain this, Mr. Derry. He

did nothing, you understand, only glanced at me and likely with no

thought for me at all, and yet I felt as if he'd spat in my face."

"Ay, that," said Constable Derry as if he found nothing strange in it at

all, and Ben looked down at the little pencil in his fingers, wondering

why Daniel Shawn should suddenly be angry with him. Not anger perhaps;

only something probingly cold and measuring in the large blue eyes. It

could not really be so, Ben thought. Or if it was so, then it meant that

Shawn was hurt or offended because Ben had run away without waiting for

him from Mistress Gundy's house....

* * * * *

Reuben watched the glittery ink-blots of Mr. Derry's little brown eyes;

heavy brows above them danced for Reuben's troubled amusement like busy

moths. "Another name was mentioned--a new bosun, Tom Ball--will that

mean bosun of your ketch _Artemis_, Mr. Kenny? And could you or the

Captain tell me anything of him?"

"I've met him only to shake hands. Peter?"

"Good sailor," said Captain Jenks thickly. "Obeys orders, works hard,

keeps his mouth shut--more'n that I never ask of my men."

Except, Reuben thought, their souls and their lives. But how can a

captain demand less than that even if he would? Reuben tried to put the

thought away, and succeeded, because now every nerve of observation in

him had grown taut to the edge of agony, and the focal point was not

Captain Jenks. Something in this crowded room was wrong as a rattlesnake

in a flower bed. It became a severe effort not to look toward the blue

eyes of Daniel Shawn. Reuben forced his attention back to what the

Constable was saying--something more about Tom Ball, maybe not

important. "Another thing, Mr. Kenny, and I'll be on my way. Have you

ever heard tell of one named Jack Marsh, or some say it should be Judah

Marsh, or Judas?"

"Why, that name--it doth echo somewhere....

"Think back, sir, ten or eleven years. Eleven it is--'96. An occasion

when a certain Captain Avery, or Every, alias Bridgeman and sometimes

called Long Ben, was allowed to enter Boston, and that openly, to dicker

for the sale of his plunder gotten under the black flag. To the great

scandal, I must say, of any man who can tell a privateer from a

gallows-bird, but so it was, Mr. Stoughton being acting Governor."

Mr. Kenny peered down his nose with the lopsided half of a smile,

perhaps suspecting Mr. Derry of humorous intent in linking holy

Stoughton with dreadful Avery. Malachi Derry appeared quite innocent.

"Mph, yes, and m'lord Bellomont as Governor had his Captain Kidd, yes

yes. Of course, Mr. Derry, I remember Avery, as who would not?"

"We suffered much odious brawling in the town by Avery's men."

"I recall it."

"One of them, known then as Judah or Judas Marsh, did have his left eye

gouged out in a brush with--umph--some of the ruder element." A glint in

the brown eyes suggested he might not be wholly innocent after all. "It

happened near my establishment, though I didn't witness it."

"And I recall the roustabout who blinded him was flogged, and

Marsh--(but wasn't it March, Mr. Derry?)--nursed the wound at the Alms

House as an idle, drunken and disorderly person."

"And escaped."

"Oh?--that I'd forgotten. So many have done so, and we still continue to

use the Alms House, damn the thing, because the House of Correction is

not in fit posture to restrain ailing rats. And by the way, Constable,

if the Meeting shall ever instruct the Selectmen and Justices in this

particular, I predict nothing will come of it. Go on, pray."

"Amen, sir. Yes, Marsh escaped after Captain Avery had gone his way.

Later Marsh was seen, oh, here and there--Plymouth, Salem Village--alway

with an evil reputation. And disappeared--for good, it was

thought--about the time we began to hear tell of John Quelch. A month

ago I received intelligence from a worthy man of my acquaintance at

Gloucester, who is a justice of the peace and a man of substance." Mr.

Derry swelled comfortably and brushed lint from his jacket, applying the

pressure of a genial silence.

John Kenny said reminiscently: "I was obliged to serve a year once as

constable, at Roxbury--mph--must confess that lieth further in the past

than 1696. Onerous occupation." He smiled like a December thaw. Mr.

Derry looked politely attentive and slightly sulky. Mr. Kenny sighed and

obliged: "You heard, from your friend at Gloucester--?"

"I heard that this man Marsh--sometimes his name did appear as March,

it's all one--had been hanging about there recent, seeking a berth with

one of the fishing vessels, but because of his foul conversation and

ugly habit, none would have him. My informant advised me that Marsh had

left, possibly for Boston, and recommended I be watchful, seeing trouble

follows this man as stink follows a polecat. Marsh, I hear, is quick

with a knife, and nowadays they do call him Smiling Jack. I believe,

sir, that thanks to this timely aid from Mr. Cory, we may be able to

conclude the grievous happening of last night by persuading Mister Marsh

to dance without benefit of a floor."

"Still, what do we know, man?" Mr. Kenny bleakly asked. "Item, he left

the tavern when Dyckman did. Any man might have done so for any of a

dozen innocent reasons."

Mr. Derry smiled slowly, reached in the air for an imaginary throat,

twisted it, wiped his hand lingeringly on his breeches. "Mr. Kenny, if

Marsh be found anywhere in the town, I can detain and question him. Why,

I dare say he'll be found before Mr. Dyckman must be buried. He shall be

brought before the body, and does any man doubt the wounds will bleed?"

"May I be there!" said Captain Jenks to his tremendous hands.

Reuben felt a new sort of sternness in his great-uncle as the small old

man leaned far over the desk. "Peter." He waited until the Captain

turned to look at him. "Peter, I will not delay the sailing of

_Artemis_. When she hath her cargo and her complement, and the tide is

right, she'll go, sir, and landside justice no concern of hers."

"Well, John---" Captain Jenks sighed cavernously. "Well, John...." For

the dozenth time he rubbed at his flushed face as if cobwebs clung to

it; his gaze wandered until it met Constable Derry's, and then he spoke

more or less as to a friend: "Find him soon, Constable."

Daniel Shawn had stepped to the window, a little behind Mr. Kenny.

Reuben could see him, his gaunt and handsome face staring away through

the smeary glass. "It's the hard thing such a man as Mr. Dyckman should

die, and for what? The poor scrap of money he may have had with

him--what's money beside a man's life, Mother of God?"

Nobody answered him. To the Captain Mr. Derry said: "I expect to find

him soon enough, and you have the right to be present when he's

examined. You understand, sir, there'll be no interference with the law,

no cheating of the gallows, for except I be strangely deluded, the man

will hang." Malachi Derry bowed to the room at large and moved to the

door on the balls of his feet.

"And that no great loss, I suppose," said Mr. Kenny. A tumbling of

disorderly papers on the desk had threatened to submerge his gold-headed

cane. He rescued it and rubbed the handle, that was shaped into an elfin

woman's leg and thigh, against the dry sagging skin beneath his jaw.

"But Jan will still be dead."

Stooping for a passage of the doorway, Mr. Derry paused to stare in

disapproval. "Mr. Kenny, surely you, sir, will not display a froward

heart before the will of the Lord? We are insects before his footstool:

we do what we may, more we cannot. Is it for us to question the

judgment? Did not your friend himself commend his soul to God? He said:

'God's will be done!' Amen."

"I am sure he said it." Mr. Kenny gazed at the Constable politely. "Mr.

Dyckman was a Lutheran, by the way. If you find Marsh, and if his guilt

be proven on him, I shall not protest his being hanged, or hanged, drawn

and quartered since that ever pleaseth the multitude, and left on the

handiest gallows Boston can provide, as a plain apodeixis"--Mr. Derry

winced and looked largely wise--"a veritable indicium of human justice.

Good morning, Mr. Derry."

Reuben heard through the opened door into the warehouse the boom of

rolling barrels, thud of boxes, metallic clang of large voices echoing

back from barren walls. _Artemis_ was filling her hold with a cargo of

salt cod for Bridgetown in Barbados. Word of the death had occasioned a

pause in the clamor earlier in the morning; a short one: commerce and

the seasons don't wait. The warehouse, Reuben thought, was a roaring

djinn, the ships its only masters; it could pause in its thundering

activity if someone died, as a giant might hesitate at the squeak of

something under his foot, but not for long. Within him a cool voice

remarked that a simile was a mischancy nag to ride--ride him easy.... He

saw Ben lean down, returning that pencil to the desk, and Ben was

evidently doing battle with some private unease. It was necessary,

Reuben reflected with some coolness of his own, to talk with Ben as soon

as they could be alone together, if only to learn what it was about

yesterday evening that Ben had not told.... Outside, Mr. Derry's voice

rumbled: "Yes, Mr. Eames, he's within, but engaged."

"He will have time for me." The voice was dry. The man entered the

office without knocking, his dour face reminding Reuben of that portrait

seen long ago in Grandmother Cory's parlor: no specific likeness to

Grandfather Matthew in the lean sadness of Mr. Simon Eames, except for

the tight closing of the gash below the nose, the mouth of a man who

expected life to taste bitter and could not allow his expectation to be

wrong.

The wealth of Mr. Eames was all ocean-born; he could have bought out Mr.

Kenny twice over. Unfortunately he hated water and was said by the

naughty-minded to turn seasick at the touch of a washrag. He might have

sat quiet in his countinghouse and let the pounds and shillings come to

him; he need not even have turned his pale eyes on the sometimes lively

water of the Bay. But human nature is consistent as a lost puppy in a

typhoon: whenever one of his ships came in, Mr. Eames invariably gritted

his large teeth and had himself rowed out across the demoniac element.

He must have this moment returned from such an ordeal. He was quite

green. "Mr. Kenny, sir, if you have a moment?"

"Certainly, Mr. Eames. I saw your _Regina_ was in on the tide this

morning. Had she a fair passage?"

"Middling, they tell me. The Lord maketh a way in the sea, and a path in

the mighty waters. No, I thank you, I never drink," he said as Mr. Kenny

fumbled at a drawer of his desk. Mr. Eames sniffed, glancing in distaste

at the bowed head of Captain Jenks, which had not lifted to acknowledge

his presence. "I regret, Mr. Kenny, it is my grievous Christian duty to

be the bearer of ill news, in the which one must seek to discover the

infinite wisdom of Providence, the Dispenser of all mercies." Reuben

sickened with understanding: the ship _Regina_ was in the Virginia

trade, and so was Uncle John's ship _Iris_; any moment now this pious

carrion crow would come to the end of the preliminaries he was enjoying

so much, and declare a disaster in plain words. Meanwhile the man was

talking, and talking, and had not yet begun, and Daniel Shawn had swung

away from the window to thrust his hands in the pockets of his green

coat and gaze down at the sad speaker as one might watch a yapping dog.

Reuben thought: What's it to Shawn? Why should _he_ step forward so,

where Uncle John must be aware of him, and put on a plain show of anger

at the bringer of bad news? "... as in all mischances and vicissitudes

it is necessary to submit, Mr. Kenny, even to offer up gracious

supplications...."

"Mr. Eames," said John Kenny, and the noise ended. Simon Eames was not

accustomed to interruptions; he probably found them ill-bred. He stood

patiently, expecting blasphemy. "Mr. Eames, I have not much time, not

here at my warehouse this morning and perhaps not in the world. As for

God's providence and disposition of the burdens men bear, may I leave

such questions to God himself, rather than have them expounded unto me

by men who, I suppose, share my humility as well as my mortality?"

"John Kenny, you had ever a somewhat naughty spirit."

"That may be so. Will you speak your news?"

Flushed, Mr. Eames drew a few deep breaths. Reuben sickly,

inconsequently remembered another face, nothing at all like the face of

Mr. Eames, a bronze painted face in a darkly reddened room. He had spat

on it. In spite of the observations anyone must make, it had never

become fully credible to Reuben that a human creature could find

pleasure in the pain of others. His mind acknowledged the evidence, his

heart refused it, and he wished weakly that magic could lift him out of

this chilly crowded room into some place--the spring woods, for

choice--where Mr. Welland would answer questions with mirth and

kindness. "Mr. Kenny, your ship _Iris_, Captain Samuel Foster

commanding, put out of Norfolk a fortnight before the departure thence

of my ship _Regina_. I have this intelligence from Captain Bart of the

_Regina_, with whom I was but now speaking. The _Iris_ sailed on the

third day of April to be precise, for Barbados, at least that was the

destination announced by Captain Foster."

"Yes, it was Captain Foster's intention to make Barbados."

"The _Regina_ sailed on the sixteenth day of April, arriving here this

morning after a slow passage, having encountered contrary winds as the

Lord willed. On her second day out of Norfolk, the seventeenth day of

April, the weather being overcast and a dirty sea running, my Captain

Bart hath told me, the _Regina_ overtook the longboat of the ship

_Iris_."

"The--longboat," said Captain Jenks, and got laboriously to his feet,

massive arms swinging, quite helpless.

Mr. Eames ignored him. "Three men were in it, Mr. Kenny, rather two men

and a boy, the boy's name being Bartram Wilks, of Dedham, a lad of about

sixteen years...."

"I remember him. Will you continue?"

"All three were wounded and famished, the Lord having seen fit to visit

them with the vials of his wrath. The boy Wilks and one of the men were

brought aboard. The other man--the sea running high and as God

disposeth--burst his head against the strakes and sank immediate. The

man brought aboard perished later, having overeaten though suffering

from pistol wounds, but the boy Wilks lived two days."

His gaze not once abandoning Mr. Eames, Daniel Shawn had taken from his

pocket a bright copper coin and was rubbing his broad thumb across it,

turning it deftly to rub the other side, an action evidently so habitual

it needed no guidance of his eyes. A farthing, Reuben thought, but not

colonial. When for a moment the thumb and forefinger held the coin

motionless by the finely milled rim, Reuben could make out a robed

figure kneeling by a floating crown, and the legend FLOREAT REX. The

pale eyes of Simon Eames were caught by the brightness and he let the

silence drag. Shawn asked of no one in particular: "Had Mr. Dyckman wife

and children?"

"Eh?" Mr. Kenny turned to him, startled. "He had, sir. A wife and two

little girls survive him."

"Oh, hanging's too gentle," said Shawn, rubbing the coin, his eyelids

lowered on a blueness like that of two bright mirrors turned to a blue

sky. "Is there a blacker thing than murder in the Decalogue? Isn't it

the destroying of the one thing we know we possess? Forgive me, sir--I

should not be talking, belike I should not be here in your time of

trouble, but I--sir, I feel it. I can't explain--steady as she goes, can

I not! for didn't I see a friend murdered in a knife brawl on the brig

_Terschelling_, and for nothing, a thing done in the time it'd take you

to breathe twice, the time it took me, sir, to run from companionway to

la'board rail and no chance, no chance to aid him at all, and then his

blood blackening in the deck seams hour by hour, the way no holystone

would ever rub it out?" Mr. Shawn seemed blankly startled to discover

the farthing in his fingers, and put it away. "Mr. Kenny, they're saying

about the docks that the poor soul was yet living when he was found.

Could he not speak at all, to damn the man who'd done the thing?"

"Little enough," said Mr. Kenny slowly. "Little enough, Mr. Shawn....

Will you continue, Mr. Eames?"

"Ha? Oh.... I believe I was about to say, Wilks lived two days, and then

died of an infection of his wounds, cutlass wounds, though Captain Bart

tended the boy in his own cabin, bled him, did whatever he might,

but--having lived long enough on this wretched earth to give Captain

Bart the tidings and to prepare his soul for its going unto the Father

of all mercies, the boy died, being a lad of decent conversation

evidently raised in fear of the Lord, for Captain Bart saith he did

make a most touching confession of faith, indeed exemplary, and may have

been of the elect, we may hope...."

"Will you continue?"

"Why, as it was told by Wilks, your ship _Iris_ was set upon by a fast

sloop which came out of the starboard quarter at dawn on the eighth day

of April, the _Iris_ being then at about latitude thirty, having made

very little southing because of scant and fitful winds, also a sudden

leak near the water line--but Captain Foster, it seems, preferred to

beat out the passage to Barbados with extra toil at the pumps rather

than put back to Norfolk, the Lord having so moved his heart to his own

sad destruction."

"What?" said Jenks. "What? What did you say?"

"Why--he was lost, Mr. Jenks, with the others. On the eighth of April

the weather was fair, the sea moderate. The sloop ran up a French flag

and may have been a privateer. The boy Wilks, however, said that the men

who boarded the _Iris_ appeared to be plain pirates, and their general

conduct of the affair would so indicate. Yet they allowed Wilks and four

others, all wounded and of no mind to go on the account, to take the

longboat, so to make the continental shore if they might or the

Bermudas--thus carrying out the plain intent of Providence that the

intelligence should come to us for a warning and a judgment. They could

not row with much effect, yet the Lord sent them a southwesterly, early

for the season, and by his infinite mercy they did cross the course of

the _Regina_ as I have said, after nine days afloat with a trifle of

water and biscuit, during which time two of the men died of their

wounds, having accomplished their part in God's purpose."

"Sam Foster," Jenks said. "Sam was a sailor of King William's time. How

did he die, Mr. Eames? Will you tell me how he died?"

"It would appear he placed the _Iris_ in posture to resist as best he

might, but was overwhelmed. A shot at close quarters swept away the

mainmast. The pirates grappled, swarmed aboard superior in numbers and

weapons. They were stripping the ship of all they wished to carry aboard

the sloop, when the longboat was put overside. Wilks and the others saw

her burned to the water, the sloop bearing off south by southeast."

Daniel Shawn grunted. "They will have been from the Bahamas, Mr.

Kenny--wolves, sir, wolves, and with the flags of a dozen nations in the

locker to suit the occasion."

"Eh? Yes, I suppose. Mr. Eames, did any go alive on the sloop?"

At least, Reuben observed, the old man was letting him keep a hand on

his arm, seemed even to welcome it, and must know that Ben was on his

other side. John Kenny was not predictable, his manner tending to put

love in its place--an acquaintance respected, possibly feared a little,

and not permitted any too forward liberties.

"The boy Wilks thought not, Mr. Kenny, but was not certain. One of the

cutlass blows had destroyed his right eye."

Captain Jenks panted: "Mr. Eames--I asked you--be there any word how Sam

Foster died?"

"With a seaman's fortitude apparently, although not, alas, in a state of

grace. He was struck down soon after the enemy boarded. Wilks saw him

lying in his blood and cursing them, but did not see the moment of his

death, whether he then turned his thought to the Lord."

"Well, Mr. Eames," said John Kenny, "you have accomplished your errand,

and I thank you for the trouble you have taken to bring me word. I beg

you also, commend me to your good Captain Bart. I will speak with him

when I may."

* * * * *

"I keep thinking in what sorry fashion I came home on this road last

night."

"Forget that, Ben."

"I can't, quite. I feel as though I'd given him another burden when

already he hath too much to bear--well, you did say, didn't you, that he

wasn't too troubled about my--my----"

"Wasn't at all. Would you have everyone perfect, devil any lapse from

virtue, and yourself a saint in ivory?"

"Oh, I know.... I swear I ought not to be going to Harvard. You must go,

but damn it, I'm no scholar. Uncle John himself wishes me to go into

trade with him some day. I say, if I do, it ought to be now."

"I disagree."

"Ay, you too.... Ru, a few weeks ago Uncle John told me--only in

passing, because then it was nothing to trouble him--that he had debts

waiting on the profit the ship _Iris_ was to have brought him. Most of

the debt is from the building of _Artemis_, and her maiden voyage won't

have fetched enough to satisfy it. It could happen, Ru, the creditors

will be on top of him like a pack of wolves."

"I--didn't know that."

"You do now. Look: wouldn't it be unwise to send _Artemis_ to be gone

for months on the Barbados triangle, when she's all he owns--she and the

little sloop _Hebe_ at Newport that can't give much account of herself?"

"What would you have him do?"

"I think _Artemis_ should make short voyages--should take that salt cod,

for instance, maybe no further than New York, back at once for more,

until the debt is cleared. I suppose the harshest of 'em would give him

that much time. And then I think that when the debt is cleared, he ought

to get a few more little fast vessels like _Hebe_ for the coastal trade,

for heaven knows that's the bread and butter of this colony, and let the

long ventures wait a few years."

"Then tell him so, Ben."

"I?... Commerce should be building, not gambling, a'n't that so? Well,

I think Uncle John believes that, but is moved to gamble all the same.

The great ventures draw his heart--and why not, seeing that in the past

he's won them? Only, now...."

"You might as well say it: now he's old, and in trouble, and the times

themselves are changing, so everyone seems to think. Tell him how you

see it. I say tell him, little brother."

"Can't you be sensible, Muttonhead?"

"Sensible--mm-yas. Well, tell him, maybe not that last morsel of your

wisdom, but tell him at least about the little companions for _Hebe_,

and short voyages for _Artemis_."

"I'm to instruct a man of seventy, when he won't even hear to my signing

on to learn a bit of seamanship and so be of use to him?"

"You could tell him anything. You only need speak in a plain voice and

never let anyone stop you from smiling in your own peculiar manner. I

say this fully understumbling that in this moment I stand to you _in

loco Gideonis Hibborum_."

"Oh, God damn it, Ru, whenever I'm dead in earnest you're laughing on a

mountaintop--yes, and when I think something comical you're a little old

man a thousand years old."

"Only a thousand? As best I can discover from perusal of ancient

records, I was born during the government of Pericles of Athens, _circa_

five hundred years before the birth of Christ. Plutarch doesn't

specifically mention me--that's the slipshod scholarship of his times

for you, obliging a man to read between the lines. It so happens I was

_not_ laughing when I urged you to tell that to Uncle John. And now,

what was it about yesterday evening at the tavern that you didn't tell

the Constable?"

"The--Constable----"

"Yes, Ben, and yes. One-eyed man. Lion Tavern. Some part of that untold

was hurting thee. What was it? Note that I stand here in the road, my

bare face hung decently in front of my brains, not laughing."

"Good God! Was I so----"

"No one in that room has my eyes and ears."

"I see.... Will you undertake not to speak of it to anyone?"

"Of course, if you charge me so."

"I do. It was simply a fleeting impression I had, that while I had

turned to see Ball and Dyckman leaving the tavern, Shawn also had

done--something or other. Looked back, I thought, where that one-eyed

man was sitting, just before he rose and followed them out. Now

understand, Ru: I was drank already. It was nothing more than a fancy."

"But I know your eyes."

"No _no_! I was drunk, and did not truly see it anyway. Even if true,

why should it mean anything? Why should it stick in my mind?"

"That of course is the question."

"Now what do you mean?"

"What is it in Shawn that should make the thought trouble you?... What

in fact do you know about Mr. Shawn?"

"Why--why, he is a man of pleasant conversation--mostly. Of--of poetic

spirit, wouldn't you say? Possessed of some learning too. He hath read

Physiologus."

"That is learning? And now again you're holding something back, but I am

no Malachi Derry."

"'Deed you're not, but what are you? Why do you press me so? Like a

judge?"

"Not to judge you, certainly. You've seen something in Shawn to disturb

you. I wish to know what it was, because--because I'm frightened, Ben;

because what touches thee touches me...."

"Something at that--house. He spoke quite cruelly to the women there,

poor sluts, as if he hated them, and for no cause. I don't know--I know

you don't like him, Ru, I can feel it. Let's not speak of him."

"Very well. Let's go on. Pontifex awaits, I'm sure. Let's walk on--you

know, decently, like Christian worthies debating how best to diddle a

neighbor over a line fence and yet remain in a state of grace."

"Pagan Athenian!"

"Of course."

"I recall a time, when thou wast--"

"The boy's dead. Poor snotnose, he died near Springfield in the

Massachusetts, in the reign of Queen Anne. Tell me something, Ben, and

don't be angry--remember how Mother used to call me Puppy?"

"Of course. And Father called thee Sir Inquiry."

"Ha? So he did...."

"Why should I be angry?"

"She called me that, I think, because I am--I am over-demonstrative,

heart on my sleeve and can't help it, Ben, it's my way, my _way_. I only

meant to ask--does it trouble thee, that I like to put my arm over thy

shoulder, sometimes kiss thy cheek? Because----"

"Now why in the world should it trouble me? A'n't thou my own brother,

Athenian?"

"I am."

"And didn't I carry thee down the stairs at Deerfield, a small boy in a

great daze at the burning and thinking it his own fault for a failure to

pray--remember that?"

"He doth ask me, whether I remember it."

"I only meant, thy notion of being at fault for failing to pray." _But

it may be mine own fault that he's an even greater infidel than I--what

did I ever do but encourage his doubting, when perhaps--when--where is

the way where light dwelleth?_

"I know, Ben. Yes, I remember it." _And if there be no Spice Islands,

where shall I go?_

_Chapter Six_

On Saturday began a long lisping April rain. Mr. Hibbs pointed out that

anyhow the boys' half-holiday had been used up on the Friday forenoon,

and although this happened because of disaster, in logic that made no

difference: the spring and summer would be all too short if Ben and

Reuben were to be ready for Harvard in September. Mr. Hibbs said too

that man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble; in other

words they'd better quit the commotion and go to work.

Mr. Kenny spent all of that day in Boston, returning late and weary in a

twitching mood. It was one of the evenings, more frequent of late, when

he insisted that no one but Ben or Reuben understood how to lift the

boot off his gouty foot. Ben did that, as Kate stood by in tears, and

from shadow at the side of the fireplace Reuben watched the old man with

the bemused intentness of one who has only recently discovered that the

study of human beings may begin at home. Reuben Cory had hardly spoken

all day, except as the lessons required it of him....

When the boot was safely removed and the foot installed on a cushion,

Ben ventured to ask whether any more had been learned concerning the

death of Jan Dyckman. "Nor is like to be!" John Kenny snarled. "The law

hath the brain of a gnat, meaning no dem'd disrespect to Mr. Derry,

blast him! Cease crying, Kate! I'll not be in my grave for another ten

or twenty years, and should you weep even then, dear, I'll rise to ha'nt

you, I swear it--now there's a good girl." Since she could not check the

flow, Kate bounced away to build a hot toddy, and later beckoned from

the doorway for Ben to come and take it to him, lest her continued

sniffling should offend.

Marsh had not been found; no sign of him, no hint of where he might have

lodged. The waiter and bartender at the Lion Tavern professed total

ignorance of such a man. "They'll be lying," said Reuben from his

shadow, and John Kenny shifted his head in discomfort until he was in

better posture to look at Reuben down his nose. "Lying, Reuben, or

unobservant or forgetful. I incline somewhat to your view. It would seem

that Mr. Derry, after one day of sniffing about like an old blind ferret

with a cold in the nose, is prepared to write off the happening as an

act of God."

When the toddy was consumed, and Mr. Kenny's clay pipe drawing properly,

and the lashing mutter of rain at the windows had become no longer a

nagging but a comfortable sound, Ben stirred the logs to stronger flame

and said, stuttering only slightly: "Uncle John, is there any market for

salt cod in New York?"

Long and drowsily, John Kenny contemplated a mild, large-eyed boy's

face, high at the forehead, the jaw square but rounded at the chin, and

the benediction upon it of firelight not unlike a lamp within. Toward

such a lamp one might spread cold hands to warm them. "Mph! Might be."

Reuben smiled to himself and slipped out of the room, and so did not

hear it when Ben inquired whether Mr. Shawn was to be considered in the

room of Jan Dyckman. "Why, Ben--as a matter of fact I must give that

some further thought," said John Kenny.

Later Ben said: "Uncle John, if _Artemis_ should make a quick run, no

further than New York and return, might I not--I mean, sir, I'd be gone

only a few weeks, and could learn----"

"Now don't press me about that. I must give it more thought. Did we not

go to Cambridge not long ago and discuss your situation with Mr.

Leverett himself? Did he not examine you in beginner's Greek and in

Latin, and find that even with the summer's work you may be scarce ready

for the first year's studies?"

"But suppose, sir--Ru is ready, as Mr. Leverett said, and certainly he

ought to begin in September--but suppose I were to wait another year?

Then I might go with _Artemis_ now--might I not?--and earn something,

and continue studies afterward, in the winter, and next summer when Ru

could aid me, and so...."

"Ben, you would sail as a ship's boy. If you endured the hardships, and

satisfied Mr. Jenks in matters of heavy labor and obedience, the which

is no easy thing to do, you might fairly soon achieve the proud

condition of an ordinary seaman. They have a saying: 'Six days shalt

thou labor as hard as thou art able; the seventh, holystone the main

deck and chip the chain cable.' They say also: 'No law off

soundings'--and I'm afraid that's true, though I guess the law according

to Peter Jenks is just enough in its own harsh way. They have even

another saying--I suppose it was repeated by the men who followed John

Quelch a few years ago and were hanged with him at Copp's Hill: 'Better

a short gasp on a tricing line than a long hunger, short pay and the

bloody scurvy.'"

"But at least, Uncle John, there would not be the expense of my keep

here, and I would be----"

"What? You're troubled that I should spend my substance on mine

own--my--like a son--why, Ben, the old have little enough they can do

except give. I pray you allow me to do that much."

"And I pray you, Uncle John, understand me! I did not mean it like that.

I meant--if I sailed, I'd be learning things that might make me of some

use to you in the business."

"Oh? So?... Well, you know that's near my heart. A few days ago you was

undecided. We spoke of it, coming home from seeing _Artemis_ return--did

we not?"

"Yes, Uncle John."

"And I feared I was nursing an old man's vanity. Urging on you something

that might be unwelcome.... Mind you, Ben, I am not your master and no

one shall be. I will not say to you, go there, do this, as I might to

the common sort. Somehow, of late years, I don't much fancy the meaning

they give to the word 'gentleman' in England. Joseph Cory was a farmer,

and a better gentleman than any milord in London. Yes, in this land the

word doth seem to be earning a new definition, or maybe it did alway own

it, but title-dazed Europe is in no posture to comprehend such a thing.

You are a gentleman's son, Ben. I say there's an aristocracy which hath

nothing at all to do with wealth or position, nor with ancestry neither

except as a parent's good qualities do often appear in the children. I

mean the aristocracy of the good mind with the good heart--you will not

find that very often on earth, Benjamin. You are a gentleman, and no one

may order you about, only guide a little, so far as love and friendship

may do it, while you--while you are yet a boy."

Ben felt the fire in his cheeks, and dreaded stammering. "Well, sir,

might it not be that sailing with _Artemis_ would help me decide, or at

least understand better, what I wish to do?"

"It--might.... Mind, I've not said yea or nay. Don't press me more on it

now. It may be two weeks yet before _Artemis_ is ready to go. Mr.

Banning of Gloucester is delaying me. His dem'd price is too dear,

noticed it a thousand times. Uh--don't you think so?"

If Reuben had been in the room he would have known how Ben, in the face

of all common sense, was very nearly taking that to mean yes. He would

have seen how the inner lamp steadied and brightened in a manner hardly

reasonable when the overt topic was nothing more ecstatic than the

current value of salt codfish. Why, the old man had not even said that

_Artemis_ would put out for New York instead of Barbados....

On Sunday the rain continued. Rob Grimes, an accomplished backslider

with sixty-odd years of sin to his credit, marched off to meeting as

usual and retained sanctity like a best suit until Monday morning, when

Mr. Kenny's nervous gray gelding acted up at sight of the saddle and

caused the first lapse into blasphemy. It was a conspiracy of the Powers

against Rob, that everything should always go wrong on Monday morning,

so that for the rest of the week his state of grace should be nothing

but a God-damned ruin. Kate Dobson slipped away to the Anglican services

that she found a comfort in a barbarous land. John Kenny fretted at

home--even he might have been subject to arrest and fine for unnecessary

travel on the Sabbath--fretted like one under enchantment who must spend

a certain twenty-four hours of every week in the guise of a rabbit, a

shrewd one who knows very well that if he should venture abroad where

the godly are baying he'd be a gone bunny.

In their first year at Roxbury, Ben and Reuben had been similarly

housebound on the Lord's day. But on a morning of urgent springtime in

the year 1705, Reuben had advanced the doctrine that one could easily

pass from the back door through the orchard and to the woods with no

danger of detection, and look: anyone who did observe the sin would be

far from any route to the meeting-house and therefore a sinner himself;

wouldn't he? "Besides, sir," said Reuben Cory, "we've a'ready done it a

couple-three times." "Oh," said John Kenny. "I find your reasoning

faultless but incomplete. You omit, Mr. Cory, reference to the necessity

of wearing your brown suits that don't show at a distance, and of

promising to avoid the sky line and open places. Some say reason doth

advance, even in these times. I a'n't sure. Wear your brown suits...."

On the Sunday after the death of Jan Dyckman, the rain was heavy enough

to discourage even Reuben's need to wander. He felt it unsafe to go to

Mr. Welland's cottage, for part of the approach out of the back fields

was visible from the main street of Roxbury; and anyway Ben shamefacedly

declared he needed help with the next half-acre of Cicero.

Drearily it rained on the Monday when Jan Dyckman was buried.

More time lost to lessons: Gideon Hibbs nourished that thought so

obviously that there was no occasion for him to utter it aloud. He was

not attending the funeral, having been only distantly acquainted with

the Dyckman family. Acidly, with a kind of humor occasionally

encountered at the borders of philosophy, he remarked to John Kenny that

he was the fourth son in a family of twelve; all his brothers and

sisters had married and begotten young, of whom the expected percentage

had died, and thus he found himself already in possession of a massive

collection of pallbearer's gloves, for the which he could discover no

practical application whatsoever (although familiar with the rumor that

some persons of a weightier worth than himself had turned a fair penny

in disposing of such); he would therefore, with Mr. Kenny's permission,

remain at home and take advantage of the peace and quiet to do a trifle

more on a work which had engaged him now for ten years, namely an

employment of the sternest logic--(it could not be published in the

colonies)--in a demonstration of the immortality of the soul. Mr. Kenny

sighed and patted his dusty back.

The few who were present with Mr. Kenny and the boys bulked like a

multitude in the spotless parlor of the Dyckman house. More unobtrusive

than the Jenks' slave Clarissa, Constable Derry was there--so far as was

known, the corpse had not bled in anyone's presence. There were Jan's

two small girls red-nosed in doll-like silence, his stricken wife, a

handful of dour strangers, Captain Jenks thoroughly sober and looking

like the vast man he was instead of a ruin, Faith and Charity stiff and

amazingly pale in black, Clarissa self-effacing, and Madam Prudence

Jenks with a black enameled comb instead of a red one.

The Lutheran dominie did not exhort, nor shout, nor whine, but spoke all

manner of pleasant things concerning the nature of the dead man, and

then entered on the main stream of his discourse--this a poetic

enumeration and description of the mercies of God, announced with mild

certainty as though he had been directly instructed in the matter and

had been astonished at the kindness of the Lord in assenting to some of

his own small suggestions. Unhesitatingly he implied that if any soul

could rest sure of heaven it was the soul of Jan Dyckman. A gentle

spirit, this minister: incapable of learning how to be content with

discontent, he had luckily never needed to learn it, since not every son

of Adam is obliged to go to school.

At some time during this passage of consolation a kerchief tumbled from

Faith's restless hand. Ben was able to find and return it to her, not

prevented, not even much scared by the polar stare of Captain Jenks. He

won a pressure of her fingers and a sudden blue-eyed look of such depth

and sweetness that she might have been saying aloud: "I am with you."

Reuben sat motionless, all gold and ivory.

The minister's tender music did not touch on the fact of murder, yet

somehow conveyed that this was an aspect of the infinite wisdom of God

which at the present time it was not polite to mention.

The mellow voice was larger but otherwise not changed, when in the

cemetery under a slanting curtain of rain it recited the last words of

commitment to the earth. Here Ben and Reuben stood together and glanced

often at each other--communication, as any observer would have known,

but under this quiet rain perhaps only one message passed, the simplest

and the most essential: I am with you.

It rained all night.

In the morning at Roxbury pools of standing water translated the image

of a warmer sky, for it was now well past the time of the return of the

robins, and of the bluebirds whose color of morning is a music made

visible. Once in such a pool at the base of a rock near Uncle John's

private road--but that was another April, the April of last year--a

distant self of Ben Cory had been revived, so that the older boy could

momentarily breathe with the breath of that child and rejoice in the

sunlight wantoning over the child's bare chest and legs and muddy feet.

He had been five then or younger, master of a vessel on a sea of shining

calm--a chip with an oak-leaf sail, a pond in a world no longer living:

well, in the immediate world you must write down a Latin subjunctive a

hundred times, whipping an intractable brain into retaining it, and by

the way, what the devil did Ovid himself care about subjunctives when it

was spring in Italy? Nothing, Ru would say--subjunctive's one small step

in a stairway to a place up yonder where you might get a glimpse of

Ovid; and Ru would take the book from him, and tumble across the bed in

his thin-legged sprawl or sit on the floor with his almost beardless

chin hooked on his knees, and listen while Ben groped and stumbled

through the lesson--correcting Ben casually, guiding, sometimes ripping

out lewd or startling comment to make the Latin stick in Ben's mind by

association, and never once needing to open the blasted volume and make

sure he was right....

By the same pool in the April of 1707, this present year of change,

Reuben Cory had stared as through a window on the inverted blue of

heaven; had knelt by the rock to find white violets, the first to come,

miniature, early-waking, with a midget purple eye. Hurried bees had

discovered them before him, since it is not enough for these restless

innocent to store up summer in the honeycomb, but with the earliest

warmth they must be out and seeking in hunger. He heard then the

incessant whispering, the waters of the earth returning to the broader

streams, to the sea, the sky, the earth again, the waters of spring.

Drifting away to the south pasture and the woods, Reuben heard also a

catbird in a budding thicket, chuckling and mewling and singing in a

dozen voices, attempting alone the merriment of a full choir, sounding

the bravura of summer before its time, fantastic, strong and sweet as

the reed of the horned god. Furry silver softness of pussy willows shone

at the edge of the woods; further in, he found the never-distant symbols

of struggle and pain, for the tips of the wild grape were becoming

fingers, later to grow aggressive, cruel in silent pressure, though all

they seek is an island of space in the sunlight. He heard the peeper

frogs, the delicate violence in their amorous throats, and now and then

the ponderous grumble of a big frog, not yet sustained in the organpoint

of summer but large as the owl-voices that had been disturbing the night

woods all winter long. He watched a robin carrying mud with a purpose,

and other small architects concerned with the foundations of secret

houses, and sat long silent in his watching; silent and thinking now and

again of something said by Mr. Welland which seemed not unrelated to

springtime and the nesting of birds: "I do believe in God, Reuben, but I

must tell you my faith is rather like that of a man on a cloudy day who

hath some notion the sun may come out before evening. Should the sky

remain overcast he will not be too sadly dismayed and may fall asleep

with ease. And I suggest, it is no belittling of mine own faith, that I

reject the arrogance of certainty."

Silent--so long that a box turtle placed a blundering claw on his shoe

before it understood that Reuben was no rock. Reuben moved his hand idly

to make it withdraw hissing into the sanctuary; he held his foot

motionless, until by degrees the little bothered head emerged, vague and

sad like Jesse Plum's, and the creature lurched away to safety. Reuben

forgot it, listening to the wind and the voices of a thousand hungers

within him, almost but not quite seeing the airy rising in mist of

castles in Spain, almost but not quite hearing the reed of the horned

god that makes a mockery of everything but blind desire and the need to

embrace the fleeing sun-dappled body in the country of Arcadia.

Then from near bushes another music streamed, three notes of purity, the

last one twice repeated; notes at intervals true to the human scale but

sung as no one sings them except a white-throated sparrow who has come

home to April in New England. But even under the glow of this music

Reuben's human brain must at once observe how bounteous nature includes

the porcupine's quill festering in helpless flesh, the needle teeth of a

weasel in a rabbit's neck, the scar on Ben Cory's lip, the drop of a

hawk, smallpox, the death of Deerfield, a pencil sketch of unredeemable

sorrow in Mr. Welland's surgery, the husband-eating habits of spiders,

the right eye of the boy Wilks gouged out by a cutlass; and so it would

seem there's no help for it, but the brain must continue, trying in some

confusion to kill wolves and learn how to be content with discontent. It

will not say: _What is man, that thou art mindful of him?_ Such mock

humility, Reuben thought, is iniquitous rubbish, in the presence of the

whitethroat's music and the drawings of Vesalius, for if the human

creature and the sparrow are not beings of wonder and infinite depth

then nothing is wonderful under the North Star.

On cool mornings after fog, Ben Cory liked to search out the green of

poplar bark still damp, a green softer and stranger than any other on

earth, seeming translucent, leading the mind to green oceans.

Ben Cory knew as well as anyone that the country beyond the magic of

poplar bark is not to be entered, and may be declared what you will.

There as here, like the reed of the horned god demanding and perilous,

the west winds move beyond the green land and over blue-green waves

remote from land.

* * * * *

The days crawled with inky toil into another Saturday afternoon, and Ben

Cory was once more free to invade Boston. This time he could ride his

mare to the Jenks house--ride like a gentleman, with a solid

determination not to fall from grace, no, not in the lightest

particular.

In the morning, Uncle John also had gone to Boston, as he seldom did on

a Saturday. Since that evening a week ago when Ben had presumed to speak

out, Uncle John had appeared withdrawn in a puzzling way--even more

since the gray hours of the funeral--almost as though he regretted

having allowed young Benjamin to talk up like a man. It created a

background trouble for Ben's thought: maybe he had made a fool of

himself after all; maybe on second thought Uncle John had found it

downright insulting, the idea that his _Artemis_ should abandon the rich

journey to the Indies and operate like a cheap ferry tub in the coastal

trade. Only background: even the fear he had managed to discuss with

Reuben, that John Kenny's fortune might tumble suddenly at the assault

of creditors, could not dominate such an afternoon as this, when the

warmth of June had arrived to blend with the crystal freshness of the

end of April, and the girl Faith was in the garden by the house, alone,

kneeling to lift with a pink finger tip the golden face of a jonquil.

Ben jumped down, not able to look again and pretend to discover her

until he had made a careful business of hitching his mare to the post in

the street, rubbing the hairy foolish nose and murmuring the words old

Molly usually required before she would stand quiet and go to dreaming

in the sun. He could turn then, but (such is the bewildering skill of

women) Faith was still engaged with the daffodil. Only at that moment

did she rise, glance toward the house, lift a hand in the light to push

back a strand of hair under her little cap, brush away a clinging leaf

from the softness of her brown skirt, and then at long last step away

from the bed of flowers to find Ben Cory at the gate, with a wondrous

flush of surprise. "Oh, Benjamin, you startled me!" Her right hand

jumped to her mouth, blue eyes laughing over it in mirthful

self-reproach at having used his first name when of course she ought to

have spoken with proper reserve in spite of the violets swaying at her

feet, and called him Mr. Cory.

"I didn't mean to. I'm not dangerous, now that's no lie."

"That, sir, remains to be seen. You did cause me to forget myself." She

was still silently laughing--from natural good spirits, or from

kindness, or because Ben Cory was the most comical savage under the sun.

"Surprising me so, Mr. Cory!" That in drawling mimic reproach, as her

hands held down the latch of the picket gate, in mimic warfare declining

to open it.

"May I come in then?"

"Oh-h--mmm," she said, her tone a singing. "I'll consider it, I suppose.

I suppose it would be cold and unkind if I obliged you to stand out

there in the street. Though perhaps you ought to, as a punishment for

surpri-ising me so."

"I'm most sorry for that."

"Are you now? Why, Mr. Cory, if I thought so I might decide you were a

poor thing of no enterprise, and so away into the house closing the

door, and you might sit out here lorn and lonely enough until the

lamplighter cometh in the evening." She blinked both eyes. "Or I could

send Charity to you, sir? With another picture maybe, so to keep you

company?" She glanced down at her hands.

Out of breath in an April gust of wisdom, Ben lifted their unresisting

warmth from the latch, opened it, found himself inside the garden and

closing the gate without commotion. She had drawn away from him,

laughter fallen from her like a ravished shield. Not too far away,

grave, with veiled downward-looking eyes, the hands he had briefly

touched holding each other as if for safety between her breasts. Ben

could neither move nor speak unless she did so. "Would you like to come

look at the daffodils? They were timid, Mr. Cory. They would not bloom

in March, but now I think the sun's a little kinder."

The daffodils, yes, but not yet. Ben stooped to the purple glow and

wind-stirred motion at his feet, plucked a single violet perfect in

fragility and held it near her eyes, so that she must lift them

presently to look at him, frightened with discovery, as young in all

ways as himself and unsure. He recaptured the memory of a breath of

music from the dingy library of John Kenny, and found a glory of pride

that he could bring these words to himself out of some dusty hour that

must have passed without love, and speak them for her pleasure, and not

sound in the least like a fool.

"You violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known,

Like the proud virgins of the year,

As if the spring were all your own;

What are you when the rose is blown?"

"Ah! What's that?"

"The verse is--oh, if I remember, by Sir Henry Wotton, to his mistress

the Queen of Bohemia. But I did make it mine," said Ben. "I made it

mine, to give you today."

"Why--why, Ben!" He saw the tears start to her eyes. A few appeared on

her cheeks. He could not touch them; understood how she must turn her

face away quickly, for the tears were no pretense at all, and she as

much startled by them as the boy who loved her--no part assigned to that

sort of tears in the undertakings of mimic reproach and mimic warfare.

"Is that why you came? To--to say something beautiful I couldn't forget,

even though...."

"Even though----?"

She smiled down at dainty shoes that were somehow not very muddy in

spite of the spring ground, trying again to be distant and a lady. "My

mother and father, 'deed they'd be much put out to know I was speaking

thus alone with you, Mr. Cory.... I meant to say: even though the words

cannot be for me."

"Cannot--why, for you and no other, ever."

"Well, we might----" she glanced at the house, and at him, and at the

house again, so that Ben grasped what she would never be so brazen as to

put in words, namely that the stone seat on the other side of the bed of

daffodils stood very near the house wall, and that this part of the wall

was blind, without any windows to overlook the seat; that the jonquils

would not tell and the stone would be warm in the sun so much like a sun

of June. She sat there with a woman's grace; without a smile, shyly

touched the stone beside her. The seat was small, yet she could only

mean that he was to be there, that near to her, breathing her fragrance

even as fantasies of twelve troubled nights had dwelt upon it. "Now tell

me, Benjamin, tell me truly the reason that brought you here?"

"Oh, to--to pluck this violet, and look on it, whether it be, as they

tell, the flower of modesty."

"Now you laugh at me."

"Never."

"Any scholar may laugh at me, Benjamin. I'm not learned."

"Nor I. But as I remember--well, not the books but what my mother used

to say, maybe I ought to take from this garden a sprig of rosemary, but

there'll be none in the bloom this time of year. Oh, Faith, I'm no

scholar at all. My brother is the wise one."

"Ay, faraway Reuben. Monday, you know, was the first and only time I've

laid eyes on him. I thought only his body was there, and he the other

side of the moon--but of course a funeral is a poor time to meet

anyone.... Rosemary? Why rosemary? Rosemary's for remembrance."

"That's what my mother used to tell. You see, I may be going away," said

Ben, and at the moment quite believed it.

"Going away?" Her face was a new miracle because of nearness.

"You heard what happened to the _Iris_?"

"Oh!" She caught his hand in both her own. "Yes, I heard of course. You

mean--what do you mean, Ben?"

"I ought to be out and earning my way. I spoke of it to Uncle John the

other evening. You see"--and he found that he was speaking to her very

much as he had done in certain dreams before the onset of sleep:

reasonably, bravely, easily, finding words without stammering. This

realization of a dream was in itself so great a wonder that he could

take other marvels almost lightly, even the marvel of her thigh against

his own, her two hands holding his one as if they desired never to let

it go. He would sail, he said. He would learn all there was for him to

know of the sea, for it was the mightiest of highways for human

enterprise--and the world, said Ben, is scarce explored. Faith seemed

astonished to learn how few were the names of great explorers.... If,

said Ben, a shipowner of Boston could build his fortune soundly on the

colonial trade until his resources were great enough so that no minor

disaster need shake him, there was no reason why such a man--he was not

completely sure at this point whether he meant himself or Uncle John

Kenny--why such a man, later on, say when the present war was over,

should not fit out a fleet, maybe five or six vessels as fast and good

as _Artemis_ but probably larger, and strike out for those parts of the

incredible Pacific where anything might be found.

Islands--continents.... Why should Spain and France sit a-straddle of

half the known earth? For that matter, what did England herself really

understand of the New World? "Oh," said Faith. "Why, this land of our

own," said Ben--"I say this ought to be the heart and center for the

exploration that's still to be done." And Faith watched him, shining,

but presently let go his hand and turned her face away.

It dawned on Ben that this vision had been newborn of this moment. It

was in the blue intensity of her eyes that those five or six vessels as

fast and good as _Artemis_ were setting out, breaking out the full

splendor of white canvas and turning south--across the Line, and then

the Horn? Or should they rather beat across the South Atlantic and round

da Gama's Cape and so on through the southern reaches of the Indian

Ocean toward their goal? Well, Shawn--Daniel Shawn would know what way

they ought to go, and would go with them of course. But not just yet;

not for a few years; not until.... Born of this moment, and so perhaps

all his earlier imaginings of the sea had been no more than

prelude--including those of a great while past, when he had never seen

so much as the tame waters of Boston harbor, but his brother (at some

moment of that past so far away that Ben could not now locate it in time

or place) had said: "I'll go with thee to the Spice Islands."

Faith was saying: "I see those things for you. It's very fair and

brave." She was not happy. "I see you will go away."

"Why, I'll come back."

"I don't know," said Faith to the faces of the jonquils. "I don't know,

whether they ever do. I am not sure my father ever cometh back, Ben. He

is here and not here."

For that Ben found no answer, but a new wave of courage allowed him to

recapture her hand. "I suppose, Faith, it sounds as if I were talking

the stuff of dreams."

"Brave dreams, but--why to me?"

"I think you made them."

"Oh, Ben, you'll break my heart. I am not--I--never mind, I don't wish

to speak of it. But you should not be telling these things to me. I

should not allow it. When we first met I thought you were only a green

boy. Now I see you're--not, quite, and I...."

His own courage amazing him, Ben said: "And thou, Faith? How old art

thou?"

"I am seventeen. But women are much older."

"I have heard that, and don't believe it."

"Oh! Oh! Must I now be angered with you?"

"No," said Ben, still dizzily courageous--"no, you must not. But you

must tell me why you should be suddenly distressed, and--and why I

shouldn't tell you what's in my heart. What is it, Faith?" The courage,

he supposed, could hardly last much longer, but he could take some pride

in it, this courage faintly like cruelty, that seemed to have swept away

her needless defenses.

"We should not be speaking thus together." As though the dutiful

assertion itself had given her confidence, she went on more tranquilly:

"Have you ever thought, Benjamin--but, la, why should you?--that the lot

of women is none so easy? We must stay at home. In many concerns we may

not even speak. We marry, d'you see, and bear children, and must mind

the house--no matter if those we love are on the far side of the earth,

yet we must do that, and keep our own counsel too.... One day, Benjamin,

I shall marry a rich man, and I hope"--but as she said it she clutched

his hand and her eyes filled--"I hope and pray he'll have nothing

whatsoever to do with the old gray sea. Oh, I _will_ not marry a sailor,

never! Only think," she said, warming to it and laughing now with some

mischief--"he my husband shall be a pillar of the colony, like Judge

Sewall, ha?--or even a royal governor, Benjamin, with _such_ a wig!--oh,

Ben, Ben, have I hurt thee?"