Wilderness of Spring Part 45

"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 a.s.sert 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 pa.s.s--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 embarra.s.sment 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 st.i.tched 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 m.u.f.fles 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 ma.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e, not a man lost--but first the long blind groping, in one boat and one d.a.m.ned little dory, never knowing what might answer the next weary thrust of the oars--why, safe ash.o.r.e they would have praised G.o.d for hearing them--the same G.o.d who strangely failed to hear a myriad others praying in extremity--and with some leftover grat.i.tude to Peter Jenks as G.o.d's instrument. "_Ben, hear me. I say G.o.d 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sionless, 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 G.o.d, 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."