_Chapter Four_
"In such a gale, and my father shot down, and no one at the helm?"
"Ay, but she did rise, Charity. I felt her bear up against it slow andbrave, and I trusted her. Call it a fancy or a vain thought, but surelyany vessel will carry under her ribs some part of the spirit of the menwho made her, a spirit of her own. Yes, she answered that blow, and noone at the helm. It had caught her flat-aback, but some-way, risingagainst it, she brought herself clear into the eye of the wind. Thereshe hung in irons a moment, only a moment, found herself, paid off,heeled over to starboard and scudded away to the southwest before it,steady as an arrow. No one at the helm."
"Do you notice, Charity?--he speaks louder, and plain, my littlebrother. That will be from answering back to the winds, and I think theywill never be so big my little brother can't shout 'em down."
"They've shouted me down many a time and will again. Well, when shefound her way like that, of course we were all flung to starboard too. Icannot remember taking that key from Shawn's body. I must have done itduring that moment while she hung in the wind's eye, for I had it in myteeth when I reached your father, and he helped me drag him to themainmast where he could brace himself. He knew me and spoke to me. Heheld my knife for me while I unlocked the irons--I remember seeing it inhis hand, and the rain was washing it clean."
_And will again._ She thought: How else could it be, after all?Certainly he would go again, and many times again. And it might be thatGod would bring him safe through tempest and calm and war, but nodaughter of Peter Jenks would dare to predict safe harbor, least of allperhaps for anyone so loved, since the Lord is a jealous God. Therecould be that final time when even Ben would not come home; his placewould be empty, and so then--and so--as if one of those fleecy tranquilclouds over in the blue clean east were advancing on her for her dubiousentertainment, Charity observed the beginning of a daydream. It wasnothing in her mind, as yet; it could become the familiar indulgence, ifshe wished: herself receiving the news of her widowhood and bearing itas best she might, maybe accepting the Romish faith so to join anunnery, or--much better!--going out among the Indians--(why not? Didnot John Eliot do so?)--to heal their sick and bind up their wounds andteach them, becoming gray and old in this dispensation of decent merciesuntil such time as God was willing to--_Hey! Misty dreams for sillymaids. I don't want you--go away!..._ Well, it was partly Ben's faultfor falling silent so long, when there was so much more to tell;Reuben's too--Reuben sitting there radiantly quiet, and skimming apebble out beyond the line of foam whenever a wave spent itselfwhispering at the open side of their sanctuary. Why dream now, when theone dream (so unlike all the others!) had amazed and somewhat frightenedher by coming true? It might have been well enough in the long year pastto dream. Not now. Anyway not of widowhood--_when he ha'n't even askedme!--but his eyes inquire of many things this afternoon_--and other suchmatters far-off and cold and surely unwelcome. It might have been wellenough, once, to dwell in that labyrinthine refuge of fantasy; andcertain treasures brought back from the labyrinth might be saved--as forinstance the created moment when his face would turn to her gravelyastonished in discovery, and he would say: 'Why, Mistress Charity,you're no longer an awkward child at all'--or something likethat--something.... But why flee from the present even for an instant?Was he not close in the here-and-now? A very tall stranger who was not astranger; vastly older, a whole year older, the mobile miracle of hisface transformed by the bitter dissonance of the great scar still lividand not quite healed, that angled across his high forehead and then ranfrom his cheekbone to the edge of his jaw. Mouth and eyes were spared.He could look far and curiously, as he always had, and deep. His smilewas--almost the same. Surely it would be altogether the same when thescar was fully healed: probably now the torn muscles pained him when hismouth widened; and maybe he felt less often in a mood for smiling sincehis homecoming and the death of John Kenny. While a part of herirresolutely wondered whether that mouth had ever kissed a woman--itmust have--her eyes searched and pondered the multiple planes andshadows of his quiet face, beholding it in many ways. It was the face ofBen Cory, with much in it of the Ben Cory who was, but even more for awhile it was a challenge and a problem. _What if I undertake what Icould never do before? Why could I never draw his face when he wasgone?... God knows I remembered it. Or did I truly? Did it not floatbefore me in the dark and come between me and the sunlight of winter?_The shadow in the hollow of his cheek was deeper than she rememberedit--well, he was thinner; bad food and not much of it, she supposed;still he grew on it and found strength in it. The hairline above his earwas a simpler curve than she recalled. And why, why had she nevernoticed that the tops of his ears were slightly pointed?--very slightly,not like Reuben's, but still he did have that comical faunlike point.Her fingers itched for a pencil but lay still, and she looked away tothe ever-moving green, and white, and unfathomable blue, the lashinghurry of spent water up along the sand, the unceasing rise and fall. _Imust have been blind._ She closed her eyes, seeing much. _Well, it oughtto be three-quarter face, the chin up a little, intentness without asmile-like so...._
"'O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days?...
"Reuben, you know too much. Won't you tell the rest, Ben? So manythings--tell me more about my father, and--all the rest. Will you not?"
"I will try.... She was far over to starboard, running from the squall,until we got the tops'l furled. Dummy and Ledyard saw to that--or bettersay your father did, for it was his voice, not mine, that made themjump to it, and I to the helm, so to lash it and then go back to yourfather for what little I could do. So much happened, and all in amoment. All that I spent minutes in telling--why, I don't suppose morethan one minute passed from the time the squall struck to the time I wasunlocking the irons. Then much less than a minute, and I was lashing thehelm, Dummy and Ledyard aloft--in that bit of time Manuel died. Ledyardhad broken French Jack's leg with a capstan bar when Jack came upthrough the hatch. Tom Ball shot poor Joey Mills, and Ledyard grappledwith Ball, beat the wind out of him I guess--a man's work. When thesquall hit us, only an instant after Jack shot your father, Jack waswashed overboard, and Ledyard--helped Ball to follow him, I believe. Allthat I didn't see; Ledyard told me later. I saw Manuel die. It was whileI was at the helm, and she settling steady as you please on thatstarboard tack. Poor soul, he'd stayed at the masthead through it all,and clung to it through the first stroke of the storm, and now wastrying to come down, and it wasn't wind or rain that made him fall, buthis own sudden shaking--or maybe he thought Dummy was coming to get him,but I don't believe that. He fell clear of the side, sank and neverrose, and _Artemis_ swept on by the empty waters where I could seenothing of him.... Shawn was not washed over. His dead hand had grippedthe rail. Later I had much trouble freeing it so to give him a decentsea-burial; and maybe that was when I truly said him a farewell, and hishand so unwilling to let her go."
"Don't alway be turning me the right side of your face. I tell you itdoes not trouble me."
"The scar would trouble most girls, Charity. Well, so I lashed the helmand went back to the Captain, who was losing blood at a fearful rate,and then I was a frantic time scrabbling in the locker for a cord tobind the leg and stop the flow. I was obliged to pull the cord with allmy power before it would stop. The bullet had completely shattered thebone. I don't think a surgeon could have set it. He said so himself, andcommanded me to cut the leg away below the break."
"The blood was not flowing but spurting?"
"Ay, Ru. Could anything have been done?"
"Not that I know of, under those conditions. Not with the anteriortibial artery spouting and the bone shattered. You were fortunate helived beyond that day. You did as he ordered?"
"I did, and he lived twenty days. I asked him if I might not bring himrum from the cabin before I cut it, and he thundered at me, No, in God'sname no, and thrust my knife back in my hand, and I cut as quickly andcleanly as I might. Then he thanked me, and
bade me help him up thecompanion ladder to the quarterdeck. There he remained for all of ourhomeward voyage, by the helm to give me guidance--and the same a fairpassage with no dirty weather except a little off the Bermudas, nothingbad. He took the tiller himself at times, to relieve me, during thefirst days. On the fourth day, I think it was, we could see the woundhad begun to mortify, and later he was sometimes out of his wits andrambling, but he would alway come clear of that and tell me once morehow he would live until we came into harbor--seeing that nothing excepthis word stood between me and Copp's Hill. He wrote an account of it alland signed it with a great flourish--that was a quiet and a sunnyday--but he feared that would not be enough. Determined he was to speakthat word for Dummy and me, and he did so. Charity, I had never thoughtyour father a compassionate man, but--we learn, sometimes."
"He--I don't know. I don't know what to say."
"Perhaps he changed, as it seems we all do.... My clothes were washedoverside, by the way. I came into Boston harbor and to Uncle John'shouse wearing a suit of Shawn's garments too small for me."
"Yes, little brother, they were too small for you, now that's no lie."
"Don't ever laugh at him!"
"I was never farther from laughing. You killed your wolf...."
"Ben, what of Ledyard? He did not come home with you."
"Nay, Charity, he did not. Ledyard, who felt so great a dread ofhanging--oh, it happened in the night, Charity, and the quiet, when we'dcome clear of that bad weather off the Bermudas and were sailing freeunder a fair southeasterly and hoping to raise the Cape in a day ortwo. Your father was sleeping in the fever of his sickness. Dummy cameto me in the dark, whimpering and pointing. He took the helm while Iwent forward, half knowing what I was to find, but I was a long timefinding it. Ledyard had climbed out on the bowsprit with a length ofrope. The rope slipped backward after he fell, and so his face cameclose against the face of the white goddess. I have never seen her lookso careless and so proud."
"For the deity of the moon that may be a way of kindness."
"Maybe, Reuben, maybe...."
Ben could remember how some such thought had stirred in his own mindthere in the moonless shadow--not altogether moonless, since the whitegoddess had taken starlight to her face and was delicately shining,aloof, indifferent, as Ben leaned out and cut the rope and gave thespent body to the sea, and the sea accepted it with the careless whisperof an enfolding wave. He had gone back then to the quarterdeck, wherethe Captain had waked in a remission of the fever, and told him of it."She's taken better men," said Captain Jenks, and shrugged and groaned."All the same I never thought he had it in him." That was all CaptainJenks ever said of Matthew Ledyard. Ben in the undemanding hours of thedays that followed could yet inquire: Where is the way where lightdwelleth? And where does the self end and the universe begin? But it wasplain--more than ever plain in this calm place where land and ocean metand the war between them was only the joyful-tragic music of breakers onfirm sand--plain that he must ask those questions again and many timesagain: of Reuben, of Charity, of others not yet known, most often ofhimself, and would discover many answers, until the unimaginable timewhen all questions arrived at silence as they had for John Kenny.Answers bearing illumination seemed closer in this place than everbefore--"My garden," said Charity when they first came here, and held upto him a pebble of many colors, flowerlike, worn smooth and round withthe sea's many thousand years.
"Storm never continues, I notice. The sky itself can't maintain it, norcan we. Always the calm afterward--here, Ben, or in the Spice Islands."
"There are storms then in the Spice Islands?"
"Of course, Ben...."
"Did my father have--have aught to say of poor Ledyard?"
"Oh, he.... Why, he prayed God deal kindly with him. And he said not aword against him when we'd entered the harbor and the men who cameaboard were questioning us. True, he had little time for words, Charity,since death was on him while he spoke, and it took him, his head on myarm, before the men were ready to lower him into the boat that shouldhave brought him ashore.... Yesterday when I went into Boston I soughtout Ledyard's widow, and told her how he aided us, and then I--a whitelie, I said he was washed overboard. Your father would have approvedthis deception, I'm sure of it. I wish he could have lived to see youagain, Charity--still it's a marvel he could even live out the homewardvoyage, he was that wasted and worn out with the sickness from hiswound. But he did, and his word stood like a shield for me, so that whenI gave mine own account they believed me. Charity, when he'd donespeaking I asked him if I might not bring him something to drink. Helaughed at me a little, saying he had not the craving. He said: 'Do youdrink to me as well as pray for me if you're a-mind.' That was the lasthe spoke.... Are you dreaming, Charity?"
"She's human too, you know."
"Oh, Ben, I was remembering how it was when they brought him home to us.Is it possible that was only three weeks ago now? And thinking of theburial, and how all the things we did--all the words spoken, ours, theminister's, our friends'--how all that was so far from--him. Am I aterrible bad heathen, that I should have felt--well, angry at it? Butmark you, Ben, I did _not_ show it, I did _not_ have one of my--myTimes. Did I? Did I show it, Ben?"
"Certainly not. You was a most quiet sweet mouse and opened your mouthfor naught but Amen and Thine-is-the-power."
"Faith and Mama in tears all day, and the neighbors resenting my dryeyes, be sure of it, and good Mr. Hoskison so--marry, so important! Asif motions of the hands and holy words spoken could make any differenceto one who's died and gone away. But you don't think I'm a terrible badheathen?"
"You are not, but if Ben and I labor with you long enough, love, perhapswe can make you one. I have hopes."
"Oh, you!"
"No, Charity, never mind the pup, you're no heathen, or if you are, thenI too. I've no patience with--let's call it mummery. I saw your fatherdie. He was a captain of men, and he died well. No words spoken over hisbody can add anything to that. Such words are for the living, if theywish them. No one spoke them for Daniel Shawn, and though it may be thatI killed him, I loved him too."
_And having said so much, and understood it while you said it, you willnever lean on me again, the which I accept because it is right._ Reubenshied another pebble beyond the running line of the water's edge, aimingfor a circle of hurrying foam, hitting it with a neat plop in thecenter. Good exercise for a steady hand. What he had said to Benconcerning storm and calm was banal, he reflected, but truth has a wayof hiding in the blur of the commonplace and must be hunted there fromtime to time: no good rushing upstairs or outdoors in search of a paperthat lies on the table under your nose. We do pass continually fromstorm to calm--every one of us, even Madam Prudence Jenks. So meet themboth, in the atmosphere of doubt where honesty is--whether in fog overquicksand, or on firm-appearing ground like this under a sunny sky ofJune. Reuben tossed another pebble, seeing Charity smile at himruminatively, a gust of the sea breeze lifting a lock of soft hair fromher broad forehead; then her homely, snub-nosed, square-jawed faceturned back to Ben and was beautiful.
"I was thinking too, I wish I might have been with you both when Mr.Kenny died. You've told me little of that, indeed nothing much aboutyour homecoming."
"He came on foot, Charity, and no word arrived ahead of him. We are notsuch important people now, you know. I was upstairs in Uncle John'sroom, and Mr. Welland with me. It was late, Mr. Hibbs gone to bed, andwe had almost persuaded Kate to go and rest too, but Mr. Welland hadtold me he half expected Uncle John to go out that night, so we sat upwith him. There had been another stroke, as you know, a light one, buthe was failing rapidly and most of the time seemed hardly to know us.Kate went downstairs for something, a pitcher of water I think, and Iheard the front door, and she cried out something, presently weeping andlaughing and calling up gibberish to us. I knew it was Ben, but I--youknow, Snotnose, you really should have sent a messenger to warn us youwas an inch taller and fifteen pounds heavier, in fact you'll be obligedto w
ork now to some purpose, or at thirty you'll have a gut, I swear it.Mind it, Charity--he was ever too fond of cracklin's." _Quiet, Ru Cory!This is how it was, and you can't tell it_: Ben Cory appeared in thecandlelight, and Ru Cory stood like a cold image and could not move, andAmadeus Welland came to him--to Reuben because he was the one inneed--and then Ben came to him also--_but you can't tell it, seeing thatfor all your and-so-forth intellect you cannot bring love into thecompass of a few well-chosen words, so be quiet and live a while_."Well, Charity, Uncle John knew him at once, even before he knelt by thebed and said, 'I've come back.' His right hand came up and touched thescar, and he said very plainly--we all heard it: Kate, and Mr. Hibbswho'd come in rubbing his eyes and doubting, it may be, that anything sogood as Ben's return could actually happen at the borders ofphilosophy--Uncle John said very plainly: 'Thou art my son.'"
"And he died then?"
"No, love, somehow nature seldom accommodates our itch for theappropriate, I don't know why. That was later in the night. Ben wasexhausted, and I made him go to bed and save the story of his life forthe following morning. Uncle John didn't die then, but seemed to havefallen into a heavy sleep. We stayed with him of course. I was watchinghis hand, Charity"--_and Amadeus' arm over my shoulder, and his voicespeaking to me now and then_--"and at some time toward morning there wasa kind of disturbance in his sleep, his hand closing as if it would holdfast to certain things for a while yet. Then it opened and gave it allaway."
_He needs no help except what Mr. Welland can give, still I'll do whatI may._ Ben could see also the next voyage of the ketch _Artemis_. Hewould not be aboard--as Sam Tench had made clear, there was much to do,and Ben Cory the one to do it. A possible partnership with Riggs ofSalem, for instance--it must be considered at least. Captain Heath wouldtake _Artemis_ to New York, and some good man must be found to takeHeath's place on the sloop _Hebe_. But next year, Ben thought, maybe hecould go again on _Artemis_--maybe to Norfolk--maybe.... Then at sometime, much later, maybe three or four good vessels fit for the passagearound the Horn, even a charter from the Queen--not at all impossible,some years from now, if done in the right way. In the meanwhile----
"Now you are dreaming, Ben. I used to know that look, in Deerfield. Butnow when your mind's under sail I suppose it goes into places you'veseen with your true eyes. And when you'd hear the sea you needn't buryan ear in the pillow and cover the other with the flat of yourpaw--well, Charity, what a fool he used to look that way! And how oftenwas I tempted to shove the paw aside and blow in his ear--give him areal storm--you know? Never did, and can't now because he's grown bigenough to give me a hiding, or he thinks he has."
"It's true I was thinking a little of the seaways, but how a devil'sname did you know it?"
"He's much too wise a fox, Ben--it's those little pointed ears."
"Charity, I meant to ask before now: Faith--is she--content?"
"I believe so. Mr. Hoskison is a worthy man, and has been most kind tous."
"What of that girl who--I mean--her name was Clarissa, was it not?"
"My mother was obliged--that is, she...."
"Without Charity's knowledge, Ben, Clarissa was sold to New York becausethere was no place for her at Dorchester."
"Oh, as for _my_ knowledge--what difference--_damn_ it--oh, forgive me!I meant----"
"Darling wench, in the presence of two scholars of the humanities youneedn't alway be deferring to your Mama's judgment, and if you do, Iwill overlook your attainment of the years of decorum and paddle you.Clarissa should have been manumitted--you know it, would have done ithad it been in your power, I know it, Ben knows it, and I dare say nowand then your Mama knows it--this being a mad world, and it seems welive in it. Now I do prophesy: in a few years my little brother will bea man of affairs, and I myself intend to become filthy rich. As soon aswe may, sweetheart, Ben or I will go to New York and Clarissa shall bebought free, so stop crying--Ben don't like it...."
"Better so in my arm, Charity? Are you comfortable?"
"Yes."
"And I must be going, seeing I promised Mr. Welland I'd be back inRoxbury by the end of the afternoon. Medicines to be compounded, a visithe's to make this evening and wishes me to go with him, and more of thestudy that endeth never."
"We can't keep you?"
"No, dear."
"If you must go, Ru, maybe I----"
"Oh no! Do you stay here in the sun. I pray you both, be happy, and loveme sometimes. I must get on with my work."
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