Wilderness of Spring Part 47

"s.h.i.t, 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 G.o.d, 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. G.o.d 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 b.i.t.c.h! 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 G.o.d! 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 n.o.bler 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."

PART THREE

_Chapter One_

The shadows of westward-rolling cloud obscured the calm of Polaris and the other stars, and the May moon. Reuben Cory had looked out not long ago from John Kenny's window, noticing a ground-mist over the lawn, ghosts of it rising toward his eyes; a feeble thing like the random smoke of a fire dying out, but later it might increase, filling all the still air above the village, above the city in the north, above the harbor and that house in Dorchester where Charity at this moment might be watching the sea through her own window of loneliness. John Kenny's voice had drawn Reuben back to the island of lamplight by the bed, and Reuben had resumed his watch there, trying to interpret the sound. It was vast labor for John Kenny to speak at all; the effort flushed his sunken cheeks, twisted his lips loosely downward to the side; after such toil it was necessary to wipe his mouth, and Mr. Welland had recommended cooling his face with a damp cloth. Reuben had done this, skilled with months of practise; now he sought to a.n.a.lyze in memory the blurred fragment of speech. It had carried the inflection of a question. The word, most probably, was "long." Certainly within the stricken flesh a mind and a self were poignantly awake, needing an answer. The brown eyes retained much alertness. Sometimes, when the old man was asleep--as he was the greater part of the time--one could imagine that he would wake naturally, frown, say something half-kind and half-sharp, clearly, looking down the nose.

Trusting to insight--since thought must move in the atmosphere of doubt, and is often free to claim that this guess is truly a little better than that one--Reuben spoke slowly and plainly: "It is a year, Uncle John, since Ben went away." A thought of the ground-mist touched Reuben again as he settled in his chair and reached for the book on the bedside table. Doubtless it would increase; men would grope in it cursing; the tower of South Church would dissolve away, shadowing forth some remote day of demolition, and in the harbor no ships would move.

Uncle John could still make some motions of his head within a narrow range, enough to indicate yes or no, agreement or denial, satisfaction or protest. Reuben saw it stir, the waxen chin lowering a fraction of an inch, the gray owl tufts rising the same tiny distance from the dent in the pillow--a nod. The guess must have been fair. Reuben saw the flush fading, the deep wrinkles around the eyes relaxing after travail. Uncle John could also move his right leg and arm, and until about a month ago had used the right hand to feed himself. Kate fed him now, or Reuben: the paralysis of his stroke had not advanced, but that right arm seemed too weary, too skeletal, and the old man had finally appeared willing to be delivered from that exertion.

"Uncle John, I've thought all winter long that Ben might come back this spring. It is May. The wild flags are out in the marshes. I know we cannot put any trust in a mere hope, but I keep the thought in my mind.

I feel certain he is alive, and will come home when he can."

The eyes watched, with intelligence; as Reuben was aware, nothing in response to what he had said was worth the effort of speech; acceptance of the message was enough. Reuben held a volume of Montaigne near Uncle John's right hand, so that if it wished the hand could rise and turn the pages, indicating a part to be read. When sleep would not arrive, Uncle John seemed to enjoy such reading, and Montaigne was his usual choice.

At times Erasmus, Locke, Sir Thomas Browne, Virgil--more often Montaigne. The blurred eyes lowered, the hand groped among the pages for a while, and tapped the beginning of the essay "Use Makes Perfect," as Reuben had almost known it would, and fell away.

Familiar with the text, Reuben could read without much thought for anything but slowness and clarity in his voice, remembering to keep his face turned toward the old man. Reuben and Mr. Welland were convinced that since the stroke of last July, Mr. Kenny's deafness had thickened; he could hear plain speech and hear it well, but it was apparent how closely his eyes followed the motion of a speaker's lips.

"'... A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, necessity and such like accidents, but, as to death, we can experiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it.'" Natural enough, Reuben thought, and perhaps good, that Uncle John should so often wish to hear this essay, in which Montaigne would have it that one must train for death as for a voluntary act. Not unnatural anyway, for one whose task of dying had begun months ago and might continue yet a long time.

"'... with how great facility do we pa.s.s from waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose the knowledge of light and of ourselves....'"

Kate would have been distressed by it. She clung, at least outwardly, to the thought that John Kenny would recover. Reuben supposed that when she was alone with herself, not sustained by those who loved her enough to reinforce the fantasy, she knew better.

"'Of this I have daily experience: if I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormy and tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and am afflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do not wish to be anywhere else....'"

The eyes watched. It was possible, Reuben felt, that the hidden self was listening to his voice as much as to the voice of Montaigne: this would remain in the region of doubt, a thing not to be known. He read on without weariness to the end: "'Whosoever shall so know himself, let him boldly speak it out.'" But Reuben thought: Who under the North Star hath ever known himself to the depth? May one not most nearly approach it by gaining a glimpse of the self in the thought of one other?--but this will happen only in the rarest moments of the journey.

John Kenny could sometimes speak with considerable clearness--clearness at any rate to one who had spent much time in learning to translate the thwarted sounds. He did so now. Kate might have been confused; Reuben found no difficulty in receiving the message: "If you will, Reuben--at the proper time--let it be known--with what peace--an infidel can die."

Reuben knew that the light convulsion of the distracted lips thereafter was a smile, in itself a major achievement. He smiled in response and set Montaigne aside. "I'll read from _Religio Medici_--shall I, sir?"

The eyes pondered; the right hand moved gently back and forth, which meant: "Yes, read at random or as you wish."

Reuben read, seeking out words he desired because he had known them at other hours and in another voice, but not unmindful of his listener's preoccupations so far as a boy of sixteen could hope to guess at them: "'Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows himself: for we censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us....

"'... It is an act within the power of charity, to translate a pa.s.sion out of one breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of it self; for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not indivisible, at least to become insensible. Now with my friend I desire not to share or partic.i.p.ate, but to engross, his sorrows; that, by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot intreat without myself, and within the circle of another....

"'... I love my friend before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him enough: some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all....'

"Elsewhere in the essay," said Reuben, and closed the book, "I think Sir Thomas was somewhat entranced by his own music at the cost of reason."

The eyes watched, probably with kindness; Reuben searched for the motion of another smile and decided, but doubtfully, that he had seen it. The eyes grew less alert; soon the old man might fall asleep. "I once asked Mr. Welland how good a doctor Sir Thomas Browne is thought to have been.

He didn't know. But he hath told me, sir, how in the time since Sir Thomas wrote, less than a hundred years, the art is much advanced. I can't but think it must go further in another hundred, as more of the unknown yields to inquiry." The eyes were patient, interested, kind; and drowsier. At length they closed, Mr. Kenny's face settling into the tranquil imitation of death, his breathing shallow, not uncomfortable.

Reuben returned to the window. The mist had grown to a veil over all things.

Light from this window penetrated the whiteness as far as a budded maple on the lawn. Whorls of thicker vapor pa.s.sed through the light, small disturbances in the ocean of mist that would now be over all the village, perhaps over all the coast as far as the Cape and out beyond.

As in the larger ocean, life groped about on the bottom in a purposeful blindness.