"Why, yes." The doctor glanced down, puzzled. "What's the matter,
Reuben? What did I say to disturb thee?"
"Did Uncle John say when _Artemis_ was to sail?"
"Why, today. You didn't know?"
"No, I--pray tell me about it."
"Well--he said she ought to have sailed that day, yesterday, but they
were waiting on some cargo from Gloucester, salt fish I believe, that
hadn't come, and Captain Jenks all of a growl about it. They left it
that they would wait till today, and if it still had not come she'd sail
and--let me think--put in at Sherburne on Nantucket, and find what the
islanders might offer to fill her hold. To my ignorant eye she already
looked low in the water, but Captain Jenks was swearing she'd ride
sweeter for another twenty ton, and a dirty shame--not his exact
words--she should sail light."
"And then New York, from Sherburne?"
"Why, no, Reuben--Barbados, thy great-uncle said."
"Ah!... Thunder!--she may be gone before he's at the office. Ben hoped
to sail, Mr. Welland. His heart was set on it. He was all one ache for
it. He left for Boston only an hour ago, with no notion that _Artemis_
was to sail today, only hoping to persuade Uncle John to let him sign
on. I felt, sir, as if I was saying good-bye. He felt it too."
"I'm confused. Isn't he for Harvard in the autumn, with thee?"
"Yes, but he hoped to make a quick voyage to New York and return. It was
his idea she should go there, and damn it, the proposal was most
sensible. Uncle John might at least have considered it. Now he'll be
heartbroken. Maybe I _was_ saying good-bye to him, and not in the way I
thought. He won't be the same when he comes home, not after this."
"Surely, Reuben, you're making too much of it."
"I know him, Mr. Welland. Certainly Uncle John meant it for the best,
but it won't do. You can cross Ben, disappoint him, be harsh with him,
but damnation, you can't deceive him, never mind if it may be for his
own good--he won't bear it." And yet even as he spoke Reuben knew that
his own strongest feeling was unwelcome, unreasonable relief: Ben would
not sail, not yet.
"Mm-yas, I begin to see.... Reuben, why do you speak as if he were
somehow your charge? He's the older. He must find his own way."
"That's true, sir. I even tried to tell him so this afternoon. To tell
him that I had been--oh, too much my brother's keeper, and was sorry for
it. I think he understood."
"Then let it be. If he's hurt and angry about this, it will pass. You've
only to stand by and be a friend to him until it does. Don't make it
more important than it is. I'm sure that after the first day or so, Ben
will not."
"I hope so." Reuben hugged his knees, watching the fire. "I hope so, and
I'll do as you say. And still I feel as if I had said good-bye to him."
"I suggest that much of living consists of saying good-bye. I suggest
that a man says good-bye to his wife when they fall asleep in the same
bed, the morrow's morn being a new region in the journey that can't be
known till they meet there together. If they do. At certain times we are
more aware of saying good-bye, that's all. As presently I must h'ist my
creaky bones out of this comfort, change to those good shoes, and say
good-bye to thee for a while. By the way, if study should come hard this
evening, let it go. Thou dost look, as a matter of fact, very tired."
"Nay, I--maybe I am.... Dorchester, you said? Might I not go with you?
You said a while ago that soon I could go with you on your rounds."
Reuben heard Mr. Welland catch his breath. "Not this one!" As often in
bothered moments, Mr. Welland took snuff. "The message at the ordinary
was--fi-_choo_-shoo!--garbled as usual, but having dissected out the
fleck or two of not-so-golden truth from the rubbish, I have some reason
to fear smallpox. That's in confidence, Doctor." He poked Reuben's
shoulder, smiling a little but also stern. "Not a word to anyone. If
it's true we'll all know it shortly, but if not there's no reason to set
people's hearts a-squirming. Lord God, it comes, and comes again, and
again, and we live like sheep on the side of Vesuvius, never knowing.
Reuben, I sometimes think--and you'll have bad moments of thinking it
too--that all we doctors do is no whit better than what the Inj'ans do,
howling and screaming and beating drums around a sick man's hut to scare
away the demons. Do you know that in all history no epidemic hath ever
been overcome, nor even much lightened? It strikes, runs its course, and
we stand helpless, making motions in the air. And yet one would think
that if contagion could somehow be prevented--but where doth it breed?
We don't know. What _is_ contagion? We don't know. Why should a thing
like the black plague have struck at England as it did some thirty years
ago, and then after blazing and slaying for a time, simply fade away,
for no reason men can see? Don't know, don't know. Sir Thomas Sydenham,
a great venerator of Hippocrates by the way, was much concerned with
epidemiology; I remain skeptical as to his conclusions. Galen, the great
Galen to whom they say we must all bow down--Galen evades; I would have
thee most cautious, Reuben, with regard to all the doctrines of Galen.
If at Harvard they give you Galen as a final authority, be polite, but
read in private the works of Sydenham--and even Paracelsus for that
matter.... I'll tell thee an almost comical thing: I have lived
fifty-three years, have read much and pondered, have spoke with a goodly
number of learned and thoughtful men, and I have never, never satisfied
myself as to a proper definition of good health."
"May it be, that state wherein flesh and spirit (the two indivisible, I
think) are free to act as fully as the condition of a social being will
allow?"
"Reuben...." The doctor was leaning forward in his chair, frowning
intently, hands clasped before him. "Reuben, you did not give me that on
the spur of the moment."
"Why, no, sir. I was fretting at that question the other night--only I
came to it from the other side, wondering, what is disease? I wished a
broader definition than any I found in the books, and so searched a
little, but I don't know that it satisfies me altogether."
"I think--mm-yas--I think I will accept it until such time as you give
me a better.... It takes no account of theology of course. But then, I
cannot entertain the thought of a punishing God. Nor even a personal God
perhaps. If personal, then in some way well beyond man's imagination. It
often amazes me, that others can find such great comfort in the notion
of a punishing God. Yet they do."
"It saves them from thought."
"Eh? How's that?"
"I think it saves them, sir, from the pains and trials of thought."
"Keep thy sharpness, Reuben. Thou hast already a summer heart and will
not lose it. Keep that thorn in the tongue. Hide it almost always, but
use it at need, never mind if others wince or even hate thee for it. Sir
William Harvey was an angry man, too much perhaps, yet without the thorn
in his tongue I dare say no one would ever have heeded him. I have none
myself." Mr. Welland bent down, short of breath, to fumble at his shoes.
"In anger I am--mm-yas--most ineffectual, a poor thing. I flush and
mumble, lose all command of my thoughts. Anger requires a coolness I do
not possess." He groped for the shoes Reuben had cleaned, and slipped
his feet into them, and sighed. "Ah, that's better--my most comfortable
pair. Thou art both cool and warm." Mr. Welland's fingers fussed
awkwardly at the shoelaces; Reuben would have helped him, but had been
unreasonably shaken by the words and did not trust his face. "I suppose
that is one reason why I love thee."
Reuben thought: He is speaking only as convention allows; I must not
make it mean what it cannot. He said rather clumsily: "Mr. Welland, if
I'm to be a doctor, some time I shall be obliged to attend smallpox
cases, whether or not I have the disease and the immunity it brings."
"But not now!" said Mr. Welland sharply. "Well--they say it's worse for
the young--and mine own observation--thou art still growing. I will not
see--I will not allow--no, not now!" he said, and having laced the shoes
after a fashion, he rose and went to the door. "I must go."
Still at the hearth, watching the fire because his vision needed a
refuge, Reuben asked: "Sir, may I detain you for one question more?"
"Of course."
"Mr. Welland, I am fifteen. I have a man's body--came to the change two
years ago, nor am I ignorant of its meaning. Why have I never desired
women?"
The fire murmured in peace; Reuben held out his hand to it, watching the
aureole of light around the fingers cleanly defined. Eventually Mr.
Welland spoke. "Never ask that of anyone else. I am glad, I suppose,
that you asked me. Never ask it of anyone else."
"I never could," said Reuben to the fire. "It would never occur to me."
"Especially not of a priest."
"I have no need for any sort of priest," said Reuben Cory.
"I know. I say that because a priest is commonly the most earnest in
nourishing and supporting men's hate for whatever is unlike themselves.
I have never understood why it should be so--Jesus, if I rightly
remember, did not assert that there was only one path of virtue.
Well--the desire of women may come to thee at a later time."
"It came to Ben before he was fourteen."
"And in France, I believe, they still burn at the stake the ones
who--never mind--my wits are wandering. Thou may'st have wondered too,
why I live so like a monk? Why I have never married?"
"Mr. Welland, I don't think I've ever wondered much, about your life,
because--oh, because you're as you are, because I don't seem to have any
wish that you should be in any way different."
"What art thou saying now?"
"Is that strange?" Reuben was able then to rise and go to him, seeing
his crinkled hands hanging motionless, his face that most would have
found supremely ugly, lowered, eyes downcast, hidden. "Is it strange?"
"To me, yes. Since no one ever said the like to me. Reuben, thou art
still growing--many more changes--let them come to pass--heavens, what
else can anyone do? But remember: whatever thou art, that is good. I
have no fantastic heart's image of thee, Reuben. I love thy self,
whatever it is and will become. Now let me only kiss thy forehead, once,
and I must go."
* * * * *
The garden was empty but for the daffodils, and the violets by the
fence, and, near the empty stone seat, a hyacinth that had opened blue
eyes for the sacrament of May. In the house itself Ben imagined too much
quiet.
His uneasiness had not lessened but grown. His hands had been shaking
when he hitched Molly; now they wobbled again when it was necessary to
lift the knocker, but they lifted it, and let it fall, and Ben winced at
the outrageous clamor his ears made of it in the silent street. Foolish
of course, a green boy's idiocy, to stand here shivering and hoping
everyone had gone away. No sound of footsteps within. Ben made vague
resolves to try the knocker once more and then hurry for the warehouse.
He was not late, however; it was still short of four o'clock, so Uncle
John would not have left. No sound of steps, but the door opened, and
Clarissa at sight of him looked unmistakably astonished.
"May I have a word with Mistress Faith, or"--Ben gulped, and applied
finishing touches to half a dozen plans in the time it took Clarissa to
glance down in slight embarrassment at the soft slippers she was
wearing, and up to his face again--"or with Captain Jenks, if he...."
"Why, I'm sorry, sir. They're all away. They left within the
half-hour."
"All away?" Ben thought: This is--relief? _Relief?_
"Yes, sir. Madam Jenks and the girls might be returning within an hour
or two--or, I think, you might find them at the docks. They all left in
the coach."
"Oh.... The--docks?" _I must stop this parrot-babbling._
"Yes, sir." That answer had been slow in coming; when it did her voice
had subtly changed, softened. "The Captain is sailing today, Mr. Coree.
Did you not know it?"
"The--_Artemis_--is sailing?"
Not relief. Something dull, heavy, unreal, as if friendly trustworthy
Molly had swung her rump about and let him have her heels; presently,
when he could scramble up from the ground, the pain would start. He felt
prepared--maybe this was the pain beginning--quite prepared to be
savagely angry with the little brown slave if he discovered that she was
amused at his ignorance of the sailing. Let her laugh, just once, or
merely smile, with that cool superior wisdom----
She did not. He had known all along that she would do nothing of the
sort; had known also that he would not have been angry if she had,
seeing it was no fault of hers that part of the world had fallen down.
The look in her brown face--widening of brown eyes, slight parting of
friendly lips--not pity, surely? Why should the slave pity him? Yet
Ben's mother had worn that look at times--when Ru cut his finger trying
to prove he could whittle with the knife in his left hand; when, on a
certain evening, Father had spoken of the French butchery at
Schenectady.... "Sir, you must have ridden hard--I see your horse is
a-sweat. Will you not come in and rest a moment?"
"_Artemis_, sailing today.... I dare say I have no occasion now to--to
go----"
"Sir, come inside. I'll fetch you a drop of brandy, isn't it? I think
you rode too hard, and the day that warm it might be June." She touched
his arm lightly, almost commandingly. Ben stepped into the cool entry,
and she closed the door. "Come into the parlor. I won't be a moment. Do
sit down, sir, and be at ease."
Ben sat down, his eyes avoiding the stern, badly stitched sampler on
the wall, seeking instead the graceful model of a full-rigged ship on
the mantel. He had been about to get up for a better look at that model,
he recalled, when Charity and Sultan ambushed him. Clarissa spread open
the drapes at the window, startling him; he had thought that in her
noiseless slippers she had already left the room. He said clumsily: "I
remember you did that when I was here before."
On her way out of the room she looked down at him--not smiling, he was
sure, though the light shone strong behind her face and he could not see
her very well. "Yes," she said thoughtfully, and was gone, and Ben
turned to the model, finding in this better light the name painted on
the side: HERA. Then this was she that went down off the Cape in a fog,
seven years ago--not a man lost.
Uncle John's telling of the story had never given Ben much realizing
sense of the smothering terror of fog at sea. He had it now, in the
delicate presence of the _Hera's_ image. Wet smoke pressing on the
eyeballs of men seeking to live; no guide, no refuge, no gleam of
direction anywhere, only merciless whiteness concealing fangs. A
whiteness like snow, a silence like the silence of snow that muffles
footsteps in a winter night.
No wind: fog flows in where the wind is not. Under the fog, no weakening
of the rolling invisible currents that could drag man's creation into
the snag teeth of a reef or against the crushing mass of a dead hulk.
"_Stove in her la'board side, filled in twenty minutes...._"
Fog....
They would have prayed, the men of the _Hera_, and perhaps Captain Jenks
with them if he had time for it. When they came safe ashore, not a man
lost--but first the long blind groping, in one boat and one damned
little dory, never knowing what might answer the next weary thrust of
the oars--why, safe ashore they would have praised God for hearing
them--the same God who strangely failed to hear a myriad others praying
in extremity--and with some leftover gratitude to Peter Jenks as God's
instrument. "_Ben, hear me. I say God is far away, no whit concerned
with man...._"
"Sir, will you not look up?" There was a trace of most gentle laughter
in that. Ben wondered when she had come in her silence, how long she had
been standing there with the brandy glass on a little tray.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I was far off indeed."
"I know."
"Thank you--this is very kind.... You are from one of the French
islands, are you not?"
"Guadeloupe."
A sip of the brandy warmed him a little. It was old, and smooth, the
glass fantastically lovely--probably the best in the house, and probably
English or continental, since nothing of the kind was made in the
colonies; Uncle John's house had nothing to match it. "This must seem a
cold foreign place to you."
"Oh, I have been more than eight years in Boston, sir. It used to be, I
must think in French and translate before I spoke--I do not do that now.
Perhaps I do not look as old as I am."
"I had thought you was near my age."
"I am twenty-seven, Mr. Coree. I know it to the very day, because
Monsieur Lafourche--of Lyons, who later settled at Guadeloupe--used
often to say that I was born but two days after his other--after his
daughter. He wished me bred up as maid and companion to her. I had
lessons with the same teachers when we were little girls, even the
reading and writing. I cannot read English with any comfort. She, the
little Mademoiselle, she died at sixteen of a consumption. I think my
presence hurt him with reminders of her." Clarissa's voice was
passionless, cool and distant; Ben noticed his hands were no longer
shaking. "Monsieur Lafourche his fortune was much impaired in the war
of--of your King William's time. Then in 'ninety-eight, between the
wars, he sold his plantation at Guadeloupe and returned to France, and
so was obliged to let me go, to a merchant of Boston, who later sold me
here. Where," she said mildly and remotely, "I have received much
kindness."
Anger moved in Ben, severe but directionless, formless, thwarted,
without an object and seeking one. One _could_ not be angry with Uncle
John. He must have meant it for the best--somehow, somehow. "Where--do
you know where _Artemis_ is bound for?"
"Barbados, sir."
"I see.... Clarissa, I cannot think of you as a slave."
She moved into the light at the window, looking out; presently said with
neutral calm: "But I am a slave."
The anger moved blindly, a flooded river seeking any low spot, any
outlet at all. "Don't you know there's talk in these times that slavery
itself is wrong? Why, Judge Samuel Sewall hath said it, written it too,
and maybe not many will agree with him, but--but before God, I do," Ben
said, wondering at the wiry clang of his own voice.
"One hears of it," she said gently, "but I think there will alway be
slavery."
"Oh, why?"
"Perhaps because no one is ever wholly free."
"Oh, don't put me off with philosophy! I understand you, but--that was
not--well, my brother, and my Uncle John too--I have heard my Uncle John
say he would never own a slave, for that the thing itself is wrong. And
later I talked of it with my brother, he was most passionate, he said it
was vile and contemptible that any man should pretend to possess the
life of another, or be privileged to command it and drive it where he
may please. My brother is strangely wise--younger but a better scholar
than I, much wiser. Somehow I can't ever do anything without first
wondering, how would he do it, what would he think of it? I lean on him
too much--well, I suppose it's because we went through much together,
and I love him so, and we--I don't know--I'm confused."
"I am not so sure," she said, speaking into the light. "I think you have
your own wisdom, Mr. Cory. Perhaps, if he be the quicker scholar, it is
only that your brother can speak his thoughts more easily."
"No," said Ben, and sighed shortly. "No, he's truly wise. I have alway
known it, am even pleased it should be so. He hath chosen a most
difficult life work, medicine. I have alway known he would go where I
cannot."
"You wished to sail with _Artemis_, did you not?"
"I did so."
"Mistress Faith spoke of it a few days ago, when I was dressing her
hair, and charged me hold it in confidence because, she said, she was
not sure you were ready to discuss it with the Captain."
It never occurred to Ben that there might be something strange in his
lack of interest as to what else Faith Jenks had said about him. "Yes, I
wished to sail, and it seems to me--I don't know why I never saw it
before--it seems to me the best reason I could have for learning my
great-uncle's trade and making myself of some account in it, would be
that then I could aid my brother. It must be difficult to be a doctor.
No one seems to grant them much respect. Mr. Welland of Roxbury is a
very learned man, Reuben tells me, and yet I never heard of anyone
deferring to him. He lives more or less in poverty."
"And still," said Clarissa, to the light--"and still, perhaps even
wisdom is not everything."
"Nay, I'm sure it's not," Ben said, and wondered whether it was wisdom
he was searching for in the brandy glass, where half of the beautiful
amber sparkled as yet untouched. He saw her then, with a more naked
vision, as she stood in the light and shadow slight as a child and
wholly a woman, in her feminine grace no longer alien. He rose with no
thought for the action and entered the same sunlight. "Clarissa, there
is more here than I should drink. Will you not share it?"
Her eyes held him, not once lowering to look at the glass, her hand not
moving to take or reject it. She was not shocked, he saw; not afraid of
him, perhaps not afraid of the brandy glass. It might be that she was
only considering what to do, like Reuben considering a position on the
chessboard; but then he understood it was nothing like that. Nudged by
his own heart, Ben said: "I assure you, no red comb will pop."
She stepped back, staring rather wildly. Her hand flew up to her mouth,
but that was no defense, for mischief and delight were brimming over,
uncontrollable. As Ben himself began to chuckle, she gave way to it
completely, throwing back her head, pointing at him helplessly, the
laugh going up and up in a golden rocket. "_Oh, le peigne, le peigne, le
bon Dieu me garde!_ Whoo!" Clarissa wailed, and slapped her thigh, and
swayed toward him--sobering completely as Ben's arm went around her
waist, but not drawing away, studying him a while with a dark and new
sweet gravity, then at last taking the brandy glass, turning it about so
that when she raised it the small mark left by his lips was covered by
her own as she drained it. The glass dropped to the floor from her
drooping hand; Ben felt she would not have cared if the lovely thing had
broken, or perhaps she wished it to break, but it did not. "_Une heure,
fugitive et immortelle, une heure et alors----_"
"I have no French." Ben's fingers lost themselves in her dark
sweet-smelling hair. "My dear, what art thou saying?--tell me."
"Ah, little or nothing," Clarissa mumbled. She unfastened his shirt, her
fingers swift and petulant, until she could rub her cheek over his bare
skin; her mouth groped for his nipple and clung lightly a second with
soft pressure of her teeth. "One hour, I think I said, one hour and then
nothing more, because you will go away, because one hour given by chance
is all we may have, _mais ton sourire_--but your smile I shall yet see,
as I saw it first when you gave it to my little Charity there at the
wharf, and I could look into you and know you, and my loins hurt me and
my empty flesh, and my silly heart cried out I love you, I love you."
Her hand sought for his wrist and clutched it hard. She spoke in a
breathless tone like anger: "Come to my room!"
It was small, and bleak, and very clean, a room under the eaves with not
even a bed but a pallet on the floor, a chair, a few hooks on the wall
for her few garments. As he followed her half blindly, Ben had received
a dim impression of passing, on the second floor, the open doorway of
some luxurious room. It didn't matter. In her room she turned to him,
suddenly grave but no less urgent. A small laugh came and passed like a
breeze, impatient, as she helped him with his clothes and her own, her
hands a bridge of warmth between them.
Slowness he felt then in the upward reaching of her mouth to find his
lips. She was embracing him, a small column of urgent softness, and
slipping down, kneeling, falling away--a slow and graceful falling until
she lay on the pallet at his feet, no longer looking at him but knowing
he would come to her.
There were the fears, shy, ridiculous but now amusingly so, not even
shameful when with another faint gust of laughter Clarissa helped him
again. Time thereafter was measured in roaring heartbeats, in the
grotesque innocent throes where Ben at last discovered a strength that
was his own, a sureness and a rightness. Some part of him could still
observe at the very crests of the waves. He could see, perhaps pity, her
rich mouth squared down as in suffering, her brown dear face suddenly
drenched in tears and twisting from side to side, and yet know that
nothing of this could be held back, nor softened, nor in any way denied,
and that pain was of no importance whatever until the cup should be
drained.
He was aware of most of the words she spoke--random and wild, fantastic
or pitiable, they all owned a rightness in the moment and were a part of
the climbing waves. "O God, hurt me! Set thy mark on me, Benjamin,
Benjamin. I want thy seed. _A moi!_ Now! Now! Benjamin--thy bright
mouth--_ainsi je vais, je vais avec toi jusqu'a la fin de la terre._"
Out of limitless quiet, his face on her satin shoulder, Ben asked: "Have
I hurt thee?"
"No. Yes...." And again with the faintest moth-wing touch of laughter:
"No...."
He drew away from her; presently sat up and saw her lying still, with
wet cheeks and closed eyes, near and defenseless, wholly quiet. She
said: "I will not yet open my eyes." And she did not, even when--timidly
this time and bewildered at his own impulse--Ben curved his hand over
the golden round of her breast where fading sunlight lay across it.
"Clarissa, forgive me."
She looked at him then, pools of darkness opening, filling with
amazement, then sorrow, then showing him such a remote and ruminative
blankness that Ben was frightened as a child, for it seemed to him that
what his own voice had said was monstrous, and nothing said now or
later could redeem it. She stood, unconcerned at her nakedness, looking
down at him he knew, the abyss between self and self widening. At length
she asked with much coolness: "What does that mean?"
"Clarissa, I did never intend"----_Oh, close my mouth, anything I say
makes it worse, and I go on spilling words_--"We were swept away--I
never intended--I've--sinned--betrayed----"
He managed to stop the noise. She was silent; he could not even hear her
breathing. Forced by the silence to look up at last, he found as he had
known he would the high blaze of contempt. "Sin? Betrayal?..." Then--he
had known this too and feared it more than anything else--contempt and
anger were gone, closed away altogether by a mask impenetrable and
cruelly polite. The mask said gently: "Shall I help you with your
clothes, Mr. Cory?"
He thought with a resentment that could accomplish nothing: Nay, I
didn't deserve that.
The mask softened a little; a brittle thing quivering, but because it
was so greatly needed it would not break. She caught her breath and
said: "Oh, I am sorry! Forgive me too--if you can." She caught up her
clothes in a clumsy armful and ran barefoot out of the room.
She had forgotten her slippers. Ben knew--this was the worst knowledge
of all--that he could not search for her in the empty house. If he found
her somewhere, a hurt and shrinking brown slave, he would not be finding
her at all. The slippers were very small, soft, gray, a little run over
at the edges. Ben dressed clumsily. He took up one of the slippers and
tucked it under his shirt, but then it seemed to him that he could not
even do that. He put back the mute and harmless thing beside its
companion, and left the house. As he unhitched Molly and set his foot in
the stirrup it occurred to him, in a misery now grown dull and almost
impersonal, that perhaps it takes more than a successful act of
intercourse at seventeen, to make a man.
* * * * *
"I say overside is the only place. A devil's name, what do you want of a
pisstail boy on such an errand?"
"Watch that tongue, Judah. Watch it, man, against the day the
rations'll run short and I'll be a-mind to cut it off and ram it down
your gullet for amusement and nourishment, now that's no lie."
"I said nothing, only spoke m' futtering mind."
"Good. You may do it again. You may speak up plain and tell me who's
captain of this bloody sloop."
"You are, Mister Shawn. I'm only saying, a God-damn boy is no use here.
Are you soft on the pup?"
"You could say one thing too much one day."
"Dead in hell or alive in hell with one eye, what's the difference?
Comes to that, though, betwix' you and me, maybe I won't be the one that
dies. Be you going below--sir?"
"I am in a moment. You too."
"Leaving only Joey and Manuel on deck, and Joey scared of a tiller he
don't know yet, and the God-damn night blacker 'n a witch's box?"
"What's to be scared of, you fool?"
"I a'n't scared of nothing, never was. Piss on 'em all. What've I got
left any man could take from me? You want Joey to pile up the tub on
Noddle's Island it's no beshitten difference to me and you know it."
"Noddle's is it? You're daft. We're miles south of it, and clear of
Dorchester Neck too, and nothing to watch but a sweet wide-open sea.
Steady as she goes, Joey Mills! Why, Judah, man, I can feel and smell
the sea and the land in the dark, the way they lie."
"I'll ever recall how Quelch give you a rope's end once for that same
mad Irish brag. Nobody can feel land in the dark."
"Mother of God, what I put up with from you! Peace on it, Judah.... Keep
your eye sharp for riding lights, Manuel--any lights. You won't see 'em,
and yet you might. Close 'em just once, any more 'n you need to blink,
and you'll hear old Shawn speak in a manner unkind. That's my boy,
Manuel--steady as she goes! O the fair night, and we better off without
a moon!... Well, Judah, well--say I brought the boy on impulse, though
it's not that entirely. I never planned it, that I did not, but didn't I
find him, the poor puzzled thing, hiding in the doorway where I was
a-mind to hide me own self for a last look at _Artemis_ going down the
bay? And didn't I learn the way he'd set his own heart on going with
her, and Kenny played him false too, with promises and then a chopping
and a changing? God damn the old fart, I could puke to think of the way
I all but licked the boots of him for a berth on her, and then to be
shoved aside, shoved aside! We'll learn how far they'll be shoving old
Shawn aside! Why, Ben's heart was set on her, so it was, he was that
full of it you wouldn't know the thing he'd do, to be sailing on
her--wisha, he shall!"
"If he was that hot for it why'd you bother to drug him?"
"This fishy tub will not have been his notion of going to sea."
"What are you laughing at now?"
"You wouldn't know. There's a sailor in that boy, Judah. There's an
explorer in that boy."
"Ah! Still beating that dead horse."
"Steady as she goes, Judah! You know how much you can say to me--don't
exceed! Ah, at that I might've persuaded him, seeing how sweet he come
aboard of us here for a gossip with old Shawn, and was telling some of
his boy's troubles but not all, not all, and believing everything old
Shawn was a-mind to tell him over the little drinks, and the fish stink,
why, he wasn't minding it, and the lantern light winking on the pretty
face of him----"
"Shit, you're drunk."
"Drunk on sea water, Judah, you with your leather heart, you wouldn't
know. He might'a' come along of his own will, now that's no lie. He was
halfway so minded. He did believe I'd been given command, for a quick
fishing trip to the Banks and so home--I think he did. But there'd have
been much to explain later, and the devil with all explaining, the drop
of opium didn't go amiss and will do him no hurt.... Judah, you fool,
don't you know he saw you there at the Lion--and you that clumsy, and
giving him your dead-window look, the way you might as well have written
a letter to their Select Watch, that you might."
"What if he did? The others is bought and paid for."
"You'll run me no such errand again, Judah--nor wouldn't've then, had
not my voice told me there was need. Mother of God, to think I may have
misheard, and a man died for nothing! But it can't be so."
"Voice?"
"You wouldn't know. How many times did you strike?"
"I don't know."
"I do. Thirteen. And he didn't die till morning. He lived to speak."
"He's dead enough now, and never spoke of me. He never saw me nor Tom.
Tom got the rag on his eyes and I came at him from behind. Thirteen, was
it?"
"It was. Judah, I think you've never been as close to your Maker as you
be this moment. You bungled that thing. He suffered, and no need, and
now it seems there was no profit in the thing at all."
"Easy, Shawn! We'll take _Artemis_ the easier and him not there."
"True enough. All the same I'm trying--while you're here so near the
rail and a weak puky thing too--I'm trying to recall if you had any part
in persuading me to it."
"You're mad, Shawn. You know I never...."
"I think you hadn't. God help you if ever I'm receiving different
instruction!... Come below, Judah. I'll show you something. I'll
discover if there's any juice in that leather heart at all. Mind the
hatch, you clumsy son of a bitch! And go in front--I'm not so green
you'll ever find yourself behind me with a rag over me eyes.... Hath he
been quiet, Dummy? Shake your head for ay or no. Dummy's a good man,
Dummy is. Mind if I'm touching your hump for luck, Dummy? And that
headshake is ay?--good enough. Look here, Judas----"
"Judah."
"Touchy, man? Look here, and look well. Nay, drink first, there's
something left here, and don't cut your stupid eye at me! I'm drinking
first from the same bottle, am I not? I say, drink it!... Now look here:
this is the mortal image and presentment of a man, Judah. O the quiet
sleep! Look on this chin, rounded like a woman's and firm with all the
fair power of a god! But you can't see, you haven't the eye to see or
the mind to know. Look on this hand, how firm already, and will it not
be all the nobler when its wondrous jointure is acquainted with the
rope, and the leap of a tiller and the burning of salt and wind? This is
a man. This is the man who'll go with me, and be my friend, and stand by
me in the new world when the rest of you are stinking carrion. And yet
it hurts me a little, that I should be taking him away from his brother
who loved him.... Go back on deck, Judah. Your one eye sees nothing. Go
back on deck. Well, lively, man! I'm following.... Come for'd. We must
have a feather under the bow."
"You're drunk and raving. I've no mind to go for'd unless you make it an
order, Shawn, and take care how you do it."
"Then bide here aft, seeing I care nothing what you think or do, and
your one eye blinder than the one that's gone.... Any lights, Manuel?"
"No, sir."
"That's well enough. She'll be far ahead. Belike we sha'n't see her till
a certain day when we're standing on and off outside Sherburne. We'll
see her then, Manuel, boy, but she won't see us until the time I choose.
And Tom Ball and French Jack aboard her, they'll know the time I choose,
they'll see us come out of the north long before the others do, I don't
care who's aloft. Good men, those, Manuel. Can you hear the water,
Manuel? What does it say, Manuel?"
"I don't know, Mr. Shawn."
"But I know. It saith, there be many islands."