Wilderness of Spring Part 41

"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--embarra.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sion 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. .h.i.t with the plain part of the stick and not with the k.n.o.b! 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing thing--but Welland seemed to think not, and was earnest, nay almost impa.s.sioned 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.... d.a.m.n 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 Sat.u.r.day, I think--he spoke to me of this. He had the thought that _Artemis_ might make a quick pa.s.sage 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!

G.o.d d.a.m.n that b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.d. 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 d.a.m.n' 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 cla.s.sical 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."