She rose quickly and moved away. He dared not look up until she spoke
again. "I am--sorry.... Marry, yes, and bear children and mind the
house, and grow old little by little--why, that Magellan of yours, tell
me, how long was _he_ gone when he made the circuit of the world? I
shall be old and gray when you--come back. Oh yes yes, an old gray dame
with wrinkled cheeks and shaking hands, and belike I'll say, 'Why,
grandchildren, I knew him, the great Benjamin Cory----'"
"Don't!" said Ben, and knew her hands were on his shoulders.
One of them curled under his chin to lift his face. "There!" she
said--"do you see? You see what a naughty heartless old woman I am
already? But promise me, Ben--promise me you _will_ come back."
Ben knew he could have stood up then and kissed her--if someone had not
passed by in the street. Faith herself seemed not displeased by that
intrusion of alien noise, only took her hands away and stood back
smiling at him, the moment irretrievable. "I will come back."
"Ben, I wish I had known you'd be here today. We have a guest arriving
soon--I must dress, and aid Mama with a few things, and I cannot invite
you to stay. I wish I might, but you understand--not my place to do so,
and I dare say Mama would be upset."
"Of course."
"But you will come again--that is, if you wish to," she said, and
laughed herself at the high absurdity of the notion that a time could
ever come when he would not wish to see her.
"Of course--whenever I may, Faith."
"I do wish you might stay this evening, but--well, 'tis a----" she
sighed in some private trouble or exasperation, moving her hands
vaguely--"one of those occasions."
Dimly frightened and not intending his own words, Ben asked: "Someone
important?"
Faith made a wry face. "_He_ would think so." Her hands sketched a wig
on her head, and she strutted a little in mimicry of self-importance. "A
man of substance, la. A little wintry in years to be sure. A merchant,
a pillar of the church, and a--widower."
"I see...."
"Take care," she said with what might be a show of real anger, "that you
do not see too much. He is a good man--I am sorry I was so naughty and
forward as to make light of him. Good day, Mr. Cory!" Then in a
lightning change at sight of his stricken face, Faith hurried to him and
framed his face in her hands and whispered: "Did I not make you promise
to come back? Oh, make your voyages--if you must. Make them for me, Ben,
and forgive my cruelty!"
"You----"
Lightly and quickly, Faith kissed his lips. "Queer little scar," she
said, and touched it with a finger tip, breathing hard. "Tell me of it
some time. Why, I--Benjamin Cory, I would wait for you a thousand
years." And she ran away across the garden, vanished utterly, in some
place where Ben supposed there would be a door to safety.
He passed through the gate in a golden haze. Molly was restless. She
meant no disrespect, but sometimes found it humorous to fidget and dance
ponderously at the moment he was lifting his foot for the stirrup. She
did so now, perhaps in comment at the obvious remoteness of Ben's mortal
mind. It had the effect of drawing him back to the present world, a few
mild expletives quivering on the edge of utterance, when the brown girl
Clarissa, returning from some bit of marketing with a parcel under her
arm, observed his difficulty, set the parcel on the steps and came to
him. "May I hold her for you, sir?"
"Oh, thanks!" Ben smiled without knowing it, and mounted easily as she
competently held the bridle and stroked Molly's friendly repentant nose.
He was in the saddle, but her hand remained there a moment longer, and
her look held him, a look profounder than a touch, demanding nothing,
declaring nothing except some kind of understanding which (until he
thought about it later) seemed to Ben quite natural. As if they, the two
of them alone, understood and recognized certain things that concerned
no one else, that no one else had ever guessed.
Clarissa spoke also, quietly, looking up at him in the sun with no
smile: "Good fortune, wherever you go."
"And to you," said Ben--involuntarily, in a way, or because no other
words could possibly have been spoken. She turned aside to take up her
parcel, and Ben rode home--across Boston Neck, past the waters of
Gallows Bay, the marshes and the quicksands.
* * * * *
In the nights that followed Ben's return from Boston with a glowing
dreambound face, April became May, but Reuben did not slip outdoors
while the house was slumbering to walk in the dark woods. He had done so
sometimes last year and the year before--usually on summer nights of
light airs and starshine when beauty like something dangerous commanded
him to approach, even though it be madness or immolation, because to
retreat was a sure kind of dying. The summery warmth was continuing; the
nights following Ben's return were as soft and full of sorcery as any
that had ever called outside his window, but Reuben did not go. A
certain new trouble had come on him, and part of it was a simple and
shameful physical fear, like that of the boy who watched the careful
advance of a wolf.
Shawn--that devil Shawn.
To Reuben, on the morning after Jan Dyckman's death, the office at the
warehouse had stunk of guilt from the moment Shawn strode into it. He
could rule that out as a morbid fancy for which Mr. Welland might have
chided him; he could damn himself half-heartedly for owning a suspicious
nature; nevertheless one fact remained clear to him (and apparently to
nobody else): the death of Jan Dyckman was simply too convenient for Mr.
Shawn, and Shawn was a man driven by a demon of ambition. Never mind
whether the ambition itself was good or bad: whatever it was, Reuben
felt, it crowded to fullness that part of the man's nature which in most
human beings held the capacity for love, kindness, and compromise with
the needs of other lives.
And now, Reuben knew, he would find no calm out there in the calling,
sweet-breathing night if he must imagine that devil Shawn behind every
tree, and fear the moonlight itself because it would illuminate his
body for--what? A knife-throw? A lethal rush?
Once Reuben had supposed that everyone possessed something like his own
electric awareness of the emotional state of others. In school at
Deerfield he used to foresee disaster whenever the teacher was about to
break into rage at Johnny Hoyt or Tom Hawks or some other favorite butt;
Reuben had never been wrong, wincing in sympathy for five or ten minutes
before the ruler slammed on a palm or the birch was lifted in ceremony
from the wall. At fifteen he still found it difficult to credit that few
actually did possess that awareness. The thing itself, he guessed, was
merely a sharp observation for tiny shifts of expression or inflections
of the voice.... Shawn had reeked of guilt--but more. The large blue
eyes had met Reuben's once above the glittering coin; and had
understood.
Unable to suggest anything in the realm of proof, Reuben quailed at
thought of speaking out. On Sunday, briefly alone with Uncle John, he
did attempt it, and fumbled it; the old man was shocked, confused, a
little angry and apparently not in a mood to listen; Reuben in misery
cancelled his own words. After that, with pain but doggedly, Reuben
considered the possibility that he was suffering from green vicious
jealousy because Ben so plainly admired the big Irishman. But the one
fact that needed no proof, the fact of the convenience of Jan Dyckman's
death for a man who wished to be mate of _Artemis_, remained like a cold
lump of indigestion, inescapable and sour.... That devil Shawn would not
have used the knife himself. That would be Judas Marsh. It could be
one-eyed Marsh behind the peaceful dark trees of John Kenny's orchard.
When Reuben could sleep at all, Shawn invaded sickly dreams, his
features rather changed, sometimes carrying a flintlock, but always
rubbing the brilliant coin, sardonically ready to tell Reuben something
or other. His words (usually) were no more than "_Floreat_ Rex"--but the
Irishman's true meaning appeared to be that the house was afire, or that
somebody, somewhere, was being flogged, and Reuben too much a womanish
coward to do anything about it. "_Floreat Rex_," said Shawn, meaning
also of course: "I think I'll cut that off--you can't plant anything
with it." Three times Reuben woke in a sweat from such a snarling dream,
the third and worst time being on the Saturday night after Ben's return
from his hour with Faith in the garden--of which he told Reuben with shy
self-deprecating astonishment, a need to speak, a need to marvel aloud
that anyone could be as fortunate as himself.
On Monday night Reuben dreamed that he was (as he truly was) lying in
his bed in this familiar lovely room, but frozen to immobility, the
house as silent as though everyone had died and no wind would ever again
rattle a shutter or chuckle outside in the expanding leaves. One sound,
however, could be felt--leisured footsteps on the stairs. Reuben's eyes
were glued shut; he knew that, knew also that the stairs were dark, the
night-light somehow blown out; but with another kind of vision he could
watch the man Shawn coming up-black patch over left eye, bright farthing
in the busy fingers of the left hand, flintlock in the right. If Reuben
could have spoken, as he tried to do, he would have said: "I killed a
wolf." He could not. He knew that if he did, the man would merely lift
him with gouging fingers under the cheekbones and toss him aside,
because it was not for Reuben, or rather not only for Reuben, that he
was gliding up the stairway. A halting then, a steady, purposeful
raising of the flintlock until Reuben must stare down into the small
black eye of the muzzle and understand that it was all over. Then
waking, swift cool wave of understanding how once more the thing was a
dream.
It had been much like that not so many years ago, when the dreams were
of Hell.
The moon was not shining, but the sky was a field of a million
untroubled lights. As Reuben got up and stretched a cramp out of his
arms--his body must have been locked like iron in the dream--he could
make out something of his brother's face, enough to sense the
tranquillity of Ben's healthy sleep, and envy it.
Ben's smooth forehead was turned away; his hand, firm and large, curled
childishly under his rounded chin. Ben's eyelashes were long as a
girl's, darker than his brows and curling upward at the tips, darker
than the thickening down on his lip that he must now shave every other
day. Reuben sat quiet, staring in the dark, until the dim pattern of his
brother's face was set free from natural bounds, became incomprehensibly
vast, all else a background, then dizzyingly small and far away,
unreachable as an image in the bottom of a well.
_What are you? What am I?_
What is fear?
What is happiness?--well, that arrives unsought, if at all: to seek it,
I know, is to stumble in a quicksand; to wait wearily hoping for it is
simply one tedious way of dying.
What if nothing is real at all except the present moment?
Why, if so, then eternity is only a word. As I look on him now, I look
on him forever. But there's deception here, for we do move and change:
eternity is a word.
If the present alone is real, then do we ourselves create it from moment
to moment? What is memory? I remember looking over hemlocks to the North
Star, and Ben looked there too, and I have no way of knowing, ever, what
he saw. I remember a day of summer----
Mid-July, for the hay was ripe then, and Reuben and his mother were
returning from carrying a noon meal and a jug of beer to the outer
fields. Other men beside Father were there, and Ben too, and some other
older children and women to help with the raking, but Reuben at seven
years old was no use with a rake. He had been allowed to carry the beer,
sipping one mouthful and no more on the way. This was the homeward
journey, and she in a smiling mood, tanned cheeks flushed, dark eyes
full of mischief.
She sat in the long grass by the palisade gate, sweeping her skirt about
to cover her feet in one graceful glide of her arm, lightly as any young
girl----
(And so she was of course. Always young. Never to be old.)
"Sit by me, Puppy." No one else was about: only the men in the fields
now toylike with distance, a flock of cloud-sheep radiant in the lower
sky, a bumblebee lighting with clumsy abruptness on Reuben's knee. "Ah,
don't stir! He won't sting thee. See!--yellow packets on his legs, he's
been a-gathering. Tell me where he's been and what did he see?" (Warmth
of a laughing face expecting nonsense.)
"Why, Mother, he went away over England, away over France, even way away
over Boston, and he went awa-a-ay over the places in Ben's Hakluyt book
where the Spice Islands are, and there was a king with ten thousand
courtiers and he stung them. Every one."
"Now why? Did they do wrong?"
"They stole the king's beer."
"What, all ten thousand of 'em?"
"Every-each of the ten thousand."
"Now, love, what a selfish old pig the king must've been, for if there
was beer enough for all ten thousand, I vow that was more than he'd ever
drink alone, la?"
"Phoo, he was a big king."
"Ah, I see.... And was there a queen of the Spice Islands?"
"There was, and she did try to prevent them stealing the beer, but one
would be tying spoons to her apron the while the rest was after it, she
could no-way catch 'em."
"Wicked things!... Was she beautiful?"
"Ay, but not like you."
"Reuben, thou'lt have me weeping."
"Why, Mother? What for?"
"I don't know, Puppy. They say women must weep sometimes, if only
because--I don't know.... Don't ever leave me."
* * * * *
On the same Monday night Ben Cory dreamed:
Faith arrived in the coach to call politely on those who lived in the
stockade, and Ben was embarrassed for them, because they allowed her
blue skirt to become draggled in the mud as she stepped from the coach
at the stockade gate. She was not annoyed, but walked in grace to the
inner citadel under the red parasol that Clarissa held unopened above
her head. Ben shook hands with her pleasantly, and climbed with the girl
named Clarity up the long spiral ladder to the top of the citadel.
"Deerfield hath no citadel," said Clarity, Ben good-naturedly agreeing.
From this eyrie they could watch the country beyond the stockade, while
in the inner rooms far below, Faith and some friend of Uncle John's were
enjoying cakes and coffee and Madeira. "Like crosstrees," said Clarity,
Ben good-naturedly agreeing, and she placed her brown sweet sunlit hands
at the edge of their perch and pulled at it to make it set up an
agreeable swaying, entertaining as a swing in a garden.
The forest beyond the stockade was alive with gray dogs.
"He is compassed about," Ben said, knowing Clarity shared his anxiety.
"He may be obliged to sell a tetradrachm of the time of Dyckman."
Clarity nodded, moving their crow's-nest back and forth with her little
brown hands, so that he could see her body arch and sway, arch and sway,
bending and straightening as the wind blew her hair back to him and hid
her face from time to time--still he could look down and see Faith
walking out through the stockade walls into the woods. The parasol was
the only thing the gray dogs were likely to desire, and Clarity had that
now, under her arm; therefore the dogs were not likely to attack Faith,
but Ben nevertheless felt a certain gloom, because she was too far away,
too far down for him to shout a warning. No real danger of course. He
said to Clarity: "Mind that thing, Mistress Coronal--I must be going."
* * * * *
"Rest, John! All evening you was like a cat on a hot stove, la, and all
Sunday too. Can't you sleep? Can't I help you sleep?"
"I'd have been lost long ago but for your kindness, Kate."
"Oh, now! Something hot to drink? I could get it easy."
"I had enough in the evening, or too much. Besides, dear, I'm not
certain the boys are asleep. Heard some stirring. One of them opening
the window or the like. I don't think Ru's been sleeping well--red-eyed
in the morning, and d'you know I can't ask? Don't know how."
"Don't fret so--'tis only their time of life. Both brave boys, and will
be grand men. In a few years you'll have no cause for anything but pride
in 'em, the both of 'em."
"That's true.... Kate, it would not much amaze me if the boys--Reuben
at least--were quite aware that sometimes I come up here to thy room at
night. They'd never speak, never show the knowledge by so much as a
look; I think they'd never even discuss it with each other alone; and
neither would have any unkind thought about it."
"Oh.... All the same----"
"I know. Best to remain discreet. Still, if we were wed----"
"It's not fitting, John. The gossip that's gone on about us, all these
years, it's become a--a--what's the word I want?"
"A commonplace?"
"Yes, of course--that, with a pox. But don't you see?--if we was to wed
now there'd be talk of another kind, and then--then I must be Madam
Kenny and bear it like a lady, which I am _not_, John, and cannot be.
Oh, let be as it is! I'd be most wretched, John--truly.... As you say,
the boys would never speak of it. I know them too. I love them too,
John."
"Well.... If it were spoken I suppose Ben would be--embarrassed, let us
say, because he's much aware of social opinion. And Reuben--who looketh
down upon social opinion from his own mountaintop like a puzzled
angel--Reuben would hold some thought about it which I could never
understand, never interpret--Kate, I don't _know_ them!... I can't see
my own youth, Kate. I think of it. A thousand things keep coming back to
me now that never did so in my fifties, or sixties--my father's sniff,
my Aunt Jessica's passion for setting the furniture exactly parallel to
the walls and washing her hands a hundred times a day--damme, the very
shape of a knot in the ash stick my father used for correcting me, and
didn't I count it a great thing won if I was hit with the plain part of
the stick and not with the knob! How Ru would have loathed him! I did
too, but a long time after he was dead I suppose I acquired a certain
comprehension, even gratitude in some matters. Well, those things come
back, but only like little pictures, Kate. I can't _feel_ how it was, to
be a youth of Ben's age. I only know that once I was, and that in a
world nothing like the one they live in, nothing like.... Mr. Welland
stopped by at my office today."
"Mr. Welland!"
"Nay, nothing to do with illness. I now learn, Kate, that our Reuben
hath suddenly decided he wishes to study medicine."
"Marry come up!"
"Ye-es. Well, I wish he might have discussed it with me first, but from
what Mr. Welland told me, I believe the thought came suddenly, and I
suppose Ru felt unready to speak to me about it, and Mr. Welland being
in town anyway on some other errand--mph, anyway, so it is. Maybe a
passing thing--but Welland seemed to think not, and was earnest, nay
almost impassioned in telling me he thought the boy had a true call to
it. I like Welland of course--honest man, courteous too, said he would
be pleased to take Reuben as apprentice, by whatever arrangement suited
my own plans for him. Man of learning too--I found we share many
interests.... Damn the thing, I could have wished better for Reuben
than--oh, pills, syrups, the whining of sick people, exposing himself to
dangerous ills, but...."
"That's what troubled you today?"
"Uh--well, no. Of course I must have some talk with Reuben about this
in--well, in a day or two...."
"Tell Kate."
"Kate, I have done a thing, the which seemed right to me at the time,
and still does, but...."
"Tell Kate."
"_Artemis_ is to sail tomorrow. The Tuesday afternoon, if the weather be
right. The sky's clear tonight--I dare say it will be fair."
"Oh?"
"Ay--Barbados. And Ben does not know it, Kate, and will not know it
until she is gone."
"Oh, John!"
"I know. Now let me try to tell thee: Ben was most desirous to sail--you
knew that--and I--I can't have it, Kate. Not now, and he so young--the
hardships, and his study disrupted, all that. A while ago--a week ago
Saturday, I think--he spoke to me of this. He had the thought that
_Artemis_ might make a quick passage to New York. It was reasonable.
He'd given it much thought evidently, and spoke up every inch a man, I
was obliged to consider it, though I still think my own judgment is
best, and so--so she's for Barbados, and will surely bring enough on her
return to clear away--certain debts, and put us in good posture for some
time to come.... Well, let it be I'm simply a coward, Kate: I could not
face him, and tell him he was not to go--that is, not now, when I--I
tell thee, Kate, I can't quite seem to recover from what happened to
_Iris_. Not as I used to recover from such misfortune. Why, when _Hera_
was lost--oh, I'm getting old. I simply could not bear to see the light
go out of him, as I knew it would."
"But later, when he's bound to know----"
"Kate--dear--don't you think it may be better for him to meet it as a
thing already done, no room for discussion?"
"Oh, I don't know, John. He--it's not for me to say."
"But you know I wish to hear whatever you think."
"I--don't know. Some-way, it don't seem...."
"You think he may be angry with me?"
"I never saw Ben angry. Could be, I vow, if he was hurt."
"And you think this may hurt him, too much?"
"I--don't _know_, John. It seemed right to you, and--oh dearie me----"
"Well, there, never mind. It's done. I sha'n't tell him till tomorrow.
Nor Reuben of course, seeing I can't burden him with the obligation to
keep a secret from his brother.... I was obliged to cross Ben in one
other particular--maybe it a'n't important. He put in a good word once
or twice for Mr. Shawn, you see, to replace poor Jan. I considered it. I
like Shawn well enough--I suppose. But then yesterday--ay, Sunday it
was--Reuben said something, to me alone, that gave me pause."
"Reuben did! John, I--did not like that Mr. Shawn."
"You too?"
"I only glimpsed him the once, that evening he came here. I felt a
coldness in him. I a'n't wise in the head, John, but my heart knows a
little sometimes. I did feel a coldness."
"Not so far from what Reuben said. We were speaking of Jan's death, and
Reuben said--blurted it, not his natural way at all, and I could see it
cost him pain--Ru said: 'Ha'n't they even questioned him?' I was obliged
to ask whom he meant. He said: 'Shawn, that devil Shawn.' He said:
'Will they not ask him concerning ends and means? Will they not ask him
how far he would go to secure a vessel so to be another Francis Drake?'
Well, I--I chided him, Kate--it shocked me, not only because he lacks a
man's years. He apologized and said no more. But then today, it so
happened another man applied--Will Hanson, New Haven man, a good sailor
that Jenks knew from years past. Jenks wished to sign him on. I had
meant to suggest Mr. Shawn, but I remembered what Reuben said and held
my peace, and so--so Hanson will be mate when she sails tomorrow.... I'm
getting old--fret and fume over decisions I'd've made a few years ago
with a snap of the fingers--and been right too. Usually. Oh, my foot!
God damn that bloody thing!"
"Lie still. You know it alway stops hurting if you lie still."
"Ah, you're kind."
"Why, John, you're mine in the sight of God. And you not even able to
believe!--well, there, I made my peace with that too, long ago, for
a'n't it what makes the world go 'round, a'n't I alway said so? Nay,
love, never mind how I chatter. Try now if you can't get some sleep."
_Chapter Seven_
If the present alone is real, one might as well eat the damn' porridge.
On Tuesday morning Reuben did so, admitting at once that the porridge
was good as always, that the fault lay with his own jumpy stomach, his
sandy-eyed weariness from a bad night. Ben also seemed depressed, or at
least without the glow and buoyancy he had shown since his last return
from Boston. Reuben had intended to offer a few not too classical
flights concerning Aphrodite Anadyomene the sea-born, partly in the hope
of learning whether love totally obliterated the sense of humor. He left
them unsaid.
It might be abstraction, not depression, that ailed Ben. Experimentally,
while his brother gazed moodily out the window, Reuben stole a sliver of
bacon from his trencher; Ben never noticed. When Reuben replaced it, Ben
did observe the action, vaguely startled, smiling and saying: "Thanks."
"Well, damn," said Reuben. Kate had watched the operation--vacantly and
without chuckling.
"Uh? A'n't you hungry, Ru?"
"Damn again," said Reuben. "I am alway hungry. I own a tapeworm of the
soul." He recaptured the bacon and popped it in his mouth. Ben was still
merely looking puzzled. "'Twould appear that this morning I am penned up
with mooncalves--even Kate won't laugh. And yet it's a fair day, a red
sky last night." Kate turned her back with odd abruptness. And in his
own dark privacy, it seemed to Reuben that he was like one who can
behold the gathering of the crimson banners for Armageddon where others
see only a flaming translation of natural clouds.
Something spoke then within him, so vividly that Reuben imagined at
first he was recalling some remark of Mr. Welland's; but casting back,
he felt certain that in their few meetings of the last weeks, the doctor
had said no such thing: _Learning begins now._ Simply his own thought,
taking on a verbalized form of uncommon clearness, of imperative power:
LEARNING BEGINS NOW.
Ben had drifted back into his country of dream. Kate was, abnormally,
not talking. Having breakfasted early as usual with Mr. Kenny, who had
left for Boston, Mr. Hibbs was waiting in the schoolroom--perhaps not
too impatiently, since work could always be done in odd moments on the
immortality of the soul. The kitchen, not oppressed by dining-room
demands of dignity, was rich with pleasant smells and the warmth of May.
Reuben refilled his coffee cup.
If learning begins (ever) it must somehow begin with premises that will
not betray. All men are mortal; Ben and I are men....
Death is the conclusion of known life. I am forced to doubt, what once
upon a time I believed, that a knowable life continues in a heaven or
hell; therefore I am forced to doubt, what once upon a time I did
believe, that Ben (or I, or Mother, or honest Jan Dyckman) can continue
beyond the conclusion we call death.
Knowledge (Mr. Welland said last Saturday) pertains to what can be
proven by the carnal senses.
Faith is belief in a proposition that cannot be established by the
carnal senses--("_My faith is like that of a man on a cloudy day...._")
Faith cannot be supported by knowledge, for if proof is found the
proposition becomes knowledge and faith is no longer relevant; if it be
not found, the proposition comes not within the region of knowledge.
Hope and desire--(_must you rattle those pots, Kate, at this especial
mortal moment?_)--hope and desire may derive partly from knowledge, but
cannot possess the force of it, for they are directed to the future,
which does not exist. Therefore faith, hope and desire are all in the
same class: to say that once upon a time I had faith in a heaven is no
more than to say that I desired it, or hoped for it, or was told I
ought to desire it--all without knowledge.
They say: "Help thou mine unbelief!" But belief and unbelief are no more
to be helped or hindered than the eyes' perception of a cloud. If the
eyes carry out their function and if the cloud be there, I shall see it.
Why, so far as belief and unbelief are concerned, will, desire, hope,
fear, pain have no part to play at all, let them be cruel as flame or
powerful as time.
The mind, he understood, would continue proposing premises for all its
life: some false, to be rejected; some (so far as the senses themselves
can be trusted) true; every one of them to be examined in the atmosphere
of doubt. Since without faith there is no other atmosphere.
A few strange years ago I walked on a quicksand, in a fog. Then it never
occurred to me that the seeming certainties were a quicksand, the
visions of Heaven a fog of fantasy. Am I any more likely to sink or
stray, now that I know it? Proposition concluded _pro tem_.