Wilderness of Spring Part 29

"I'll send the servant," said Mistress Gundy, and rose, about to potter away.

"Do you send him," said Shawn to the embers, "but bring in the wenches before he returns, Nanny, else you'll be rambling on from here to hereafter and we biting the curbing of the stall, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, with nothing to mount."

"Mr. Shawn, sir, one day your tongue'll turn and bite you, sir."

"Then I'll have thee kiss the place, old woman." She sidled for the doorway, out of reach of his lazy hand. "But wait till I bleed."

"I marvel the sweet young gentleman ever took up with you, sir, you that come in with a smile and stay with a curse."

"Took up with me to see a bit of the world, Nanny, the way the world's a troublesome thing for a boy to see at all and I'm part of it. Come give us a kiss!"

"You leave me tell you this: you mark one of my poor girls on the face just once, just once, Mr. Shawn----"

"And you'll have law on me belike?"

"Though it be the ruin o' me I'll say it: I think you're a wicked man, Mr. Shawn."

"But not on the face is well enough?"

"Mr. Shawn!"

"Come now, give us a kiss and be friends!"

Ben said involuntarily: "Don't, Mr. Shawn! Leave her alone!"

Shawn locked stares with him a moment, smiling, then spread his hands and folded them again on the chair back and dropped his jaw on them, watching the embers, alone on an island. Behind his back Mistress Gundy was beckoning, and Shawn paid no heed as Ben stepped into the hallway with her. "I don't suppose he means too much by his talk, Mistress Gundy."

"Eh? Known him long?"

"Not long, not very well.... I was astonished he should speak so."

She was sniffling, patting her lips. "Let it go." In spite of the small gust of tears she was alert and brisk. "Be you paying or him?"

"I am. How--how much?"

"Ho, and if he's not, how comes he to lay about him so?" She broke off, laughing indulgently. "Never thee mind, Master Just Benjamin. Two such lovely girls! Well now, if you're a-mind to buy us a wee trifle of rum--so pleasant with a dab of b.u.t.ter, don't you think?--and the girls...."

Ben re-entered the parlor with enlarged wisdom and a shrunken wallet.

The books for Reuben, lying in a chair, comforted him: at least some of his money had been well spent.

"Don't allow her to rob you, a devil's name," said Shawn drowsily. "No highwayman liveth but could learn jolly tricks of a bawd."

Glancing down at the alien profile, wondering in pa.s.sing whether he even liked Daniel Shawn, Ben felt disinclined to mention that the robbery, if that was the name for it, had already taken place. He jingled the few pence and farthings remaining, and waited, himself alone on an island within a cavern.

She entered abruptly with good-natured bounce and giggle, plump and moon-faced, smelling of rose-water and sweat. As she paused in the doorway her transparent smock offered Ben a silhouette of cushiony thighs, by her intent maybe, and then she was coming to him directly with nothing for Shawn but a glance that might or might not have held recognition. "There's the sweet cod," she said, and cupped Ben's chin in her hands, and was on his lap, heavy and squirming, elastic, moist and warm.

In Deerfield, "wh.o.r.e" was only a word, seldom used except in back-of-the-barn profanity or Bible readings. It had never occurred to Ben, but did now as Laura twitched his shirt open and rubbed a knowing silky hand over his nipples, that a wh.o.r.e might be a human being, and friendly.

Another girl, stately and yellow-haired, sat in dignity across the room from Shawn--surely not cowlike as he had said but quite beautiful in her stillness, conveying an impression that she was not really present. A woman on an island. Shawn had remained in his idle sprawl, studying the queenly repose of her like a man who might yawn any moment. "Be you pleased with me?" Laura whispered, and nibbled Ben's ear.

"Of course." With some enterprise he found a smooth kneecap and sent his hand exploring, since she seemed to expect it; and then he thought: Too much of that d.a.m.ned ale--or maybe I'm ill--and now we must even have b.u.t.tered rum!

All the same, it was unmistakable relief when Mistress Gundy pottered back, ahead of a gangling servant with the drinks. "Well, I'm sure,"

said the little madam--"to the Queen, G.o.d bless her!"

Laura bounced off Ben's lap at the call of patriotism. The tall quiet girl was on her feet, and Shawn too. But as Ben staggered, finding his leg half asleep, and drank dutifully, he was aware of a sudden annoyance in Daniel Shawn, and saw how with the mug at his lips the man was hardly tilting it at all. To Ben it was obscure, a thing he might tell himself he had not seen. This stifling moment, with fat Laura's arm hugging his loins, held no fair opportunity to think about it. But surely for all his strange, sometimes cruel speech and wild ways, Mr. Shawn was not disloyal--surely n.o.body ever refused to drink the health of Queen Anne!

Ben coughed as the cheap rum bored down his gullet. He saw Shawn grab the wrist of the tall girl and stride out of the room with her, not a word for courtesy. She had not even finished her drink.

"A hard man," said Mistress Gundy, comfortably stirring her mug. "Well, I told him. Just let him mark one of my girls, just once...."

"He won't, Mother," said Laura. "Why, that time----" A sharp glance from the old woman checked her. It held more than sharpness; they were exchanging some wry understanding, and Ben was oppressed at feeling himself a patronized, tiresome child. Laura tugged amiably at his arm.

"Come to my room, love?" He followed her jiggling rear down a whispering hallway to a smaller cavern of stale roses. She had brought along the remains of his b.u.t.tered rum. "Old bawd'd finish it, did you leave it there. A'n't she a caution, love?"

"Mm." Ben gulped a little more of it, finding it not so bad. Here the bed was virtually everything, but Laura was fond of dolls; a dozen of them sat about in comical att.i.tudes, and Ben would have liked to say something about them. "Help me drink it, won't you? I had enough."

"Nay, I had too, and too much." She patted her stomach and yawned. With the casualness of habit, she pulled her smock up to her middle and dropped on the bed, fat thighs comfortably wide.

Ben shoved his drink aside. In daydream, yes--he had pictured such mindless complaisance in a woman who never quite owned a face. The reality was no more voluptuous than a belch or a kick under the ribs.

Yet Laura was neither gross nor unclean--indeed, pretty in her overblown way, and certainly friendly. Repelled and hypnotized, he stumbled toward her, meeting, across the bulk of her pink flesh, a drowsy smile that suppressed another yawn. "What's the matter, love? Be you afeared of me?"

"Of course not."

"Ah--sweet cod--my little goat--whatever's the matter, love?" Her voice was thick and slow, the noise of a wave, her giggle the idle foam on a reaching wave. "Don't you know nothing, little goat?"

Ben fought with his clothes. For an instant in the candlelight the hair was golden, not dark, the pallid skin a damask rose. Then it was fat Laura again, n.o.body else--writhing, arching her heaviness, moaning, big arms reaching for him in practised simulation of hunger as Ben groped, struggled, and spent at the instant of contact with no pleasure, no excitement but that of fear and no relief but that of exhaustion.

Laura cursed casually under her breath, but as she sat up she was not noticeably angry--more amused, maybe a little concerned. "First time, dearie?" Ben nodded in misery. "Ho, never mind! You're very young."

"G.o.d d.a.m.n, I'm seventeen."

"Hey! No cursing and swearing, boy!--I can't abide it.... Did something happen maybe? You know--spill salt at supper? Something?" She was serious, lightly worried. Ben shook his head. "Why, there!" She pointed at his jacket tossed on a chair, a bit of his kerchief dangling from a pocket. "Swoonds, that's bad luck as ever was," she said, and rolled off the bed to push the kerchief out of sight. "No b.l.o.o.d.y wonder!"

Ben knew she would take great offense if he laughed. Anyway the darkness of a new fear was killing laughter. She sat by a little square of wall-mirror to put her hair to rights. Ben ordered his clothes, finding his legs too large, blurred, disobedient. Maybe the last of that b.u.t.tered rum would steady him. He gulped it down. "I'm sorry," said Ben.

"Hoo, it's a nothing, boy, happens all the time. Come again some day,"

she said, and could not resist a small parting cruelty: "When you're old enough."

The darkness of the new fear followed him out of the room, and the name of it was Pox.

Mistress Gundy sat as before with her rum, or somebody's rum, and nodded to Ben, waving her puckered hand in some cryptic courtesy. Her eyes were swimming--sad or hilarious or both. Somewhere down the hallway a woman was whimpering rhythmically. "Top of the evening, young man. I'm b.l.o.o.d.y mellow." Mistress Gundy patted her lips. "Going so soon? Parcel's yonder, needn't make out I'm keeping a den of thieves."

"Thank you. Had no such thought."

"No dallying with Venus? Up and off like a little bull? I'm b.l.o.o.d.y mellow or I wouldn't speak so free, but I say a bit of broad speech never hurt no one, la, besides, I lived on a farm when I was a little maid. Lord, the Surrey countryside, and I'll never see it again!" She wept comfortably, and burped. "A'n't you waiting for your friend?"

"I must be going. Tell him I couldn't wait."

"Tsha!" She drank, her little finger thrust out for gentility. "Come again, do. I feel sorry for you. My weakness." She held up her free hand earnestly to detain him. "Understand? I feel like a mother to you, but you--you--you----"