Wilderness of Spring Part 9

"Town authorities, boy. Burial. Is that what you meant?"

"A pauper's burial."

"Thankful heart, boy, I can't understand you. You wish the creature buried among the Saints?"

"No, I...." Ben searched his mind hopelessly. During the night many polite convincing speeches had been prepared--scattered, one and all. He blurted the one thought his mind could hold: "Reuben and I must go to Uncle John Kenny at Roxbury."

"What!" She was whitely horrified. "You don't know what you say."

"Why, Grandmother, he was a friend to my father. They wrote to one another. Once Uncle John sent me a book."

"He did?" She sat down slowly, little white hands stiff as ivory on the arms of the chair. "That may serve to explain much.... Benjamin, I require you to listen to me if only this once. I have reason to believe that my poor brother John is an atheist. I will trust you did not know this; now you do. He is an old man--as I'm old--and hardened, corrupt with false learning, evil conversation, a blasphemer, often fuddled with drink, a--a fornicator. He hath kept a mistress, at Roxbury, quite openly, under the name of housekeeper--for all I know the wh.o.r.e is there yet. Being wealthy, with friends in high places, none dares deal with him--that's the pa.s.s our colony hath arrived at. We builded a Zion; it becometh an abomination, a pen of swine, a nest of adulterers, blasphemers, sodomites, worshippers of the golden calf--vipers.... And now you wish me to allow you and that poor child your brother to go into that--that filthiness. Benjamin, I will hear nothing more about going to my brother at Roxbury. I will not send you to an even worse darkness than you dwelt in at Deerfield."

"We dwelt in no darkness there!"

"Benjamin, be careful!"

The avalanche had him, all fences of caution swept aside. "You have no right to speak so of my father! We _will_ go to Roxbury!"

"Benjamin, stop!"

"And you'll bury Jesse like a dead dog--your Christian charity!

Judgments--my father--you lie, lie!"

"Jonas!"

"Wasn't he your son? I believe nothing."

"Jonas! Jonas!"

"I won't bear it!" But now Jonas was behind him and twisting his right arm up between the shoulders.

"Jonas, lock him in his room. Here!" She fumbled a bunch of keys from her belt, with difficulty, for doubtless she could not see plainly.

"Here, take it, Jonas! The boy is possessed!" Eyes flaring to the whites, she lifted the cl.u.s.ter of keys and struck Ben twice across the mouth.

As Jonas frogmarched him to the stairs, Ben tried to see down the hallway into the kitchen. Anna Lloyd was restraining Reuben, though at the moment the boy was not trying to break free but stood leaning away from her in a frozen motion, his white face empty.

Jonas hurled Ben into the bedroom. Ben pulled himself upright by a leg of the four-poster in time to hear the door slam and the key chatter in the lock. He spat blood from his lips, and heard the floor creak under Jonas' swift departure; heard silence fall on the room like the booming of another, larger door. Even then a part of his mind could fret at what seemed the strangest thing of all: when she struck him with the keys, his grandmother had looked exalted, almost happy--satisfied....

Hours crawled.

Now and then Ben Cory tried to retreat from images of the recent past and terrors of the immediate present within the shelter of a lethargy, a temporary refusal to think of anything at all. This was no good, since no power could shut away the thought of Reuben alone with these people, his own twelve-year-old temper explosive and perilous. Sooner or later Ru was bound to lose control and fetch down the wrath as Ben himself had done. Now when it was too late, Ben saw his outbreak as a betrayal of Reuben, a betrayal of trust. Once or twice he pressed his forehead on the window gla.s.s and tried to pray--seeing then that if only Reuben were with him it would be quite possible to jump from this window with fair safety into the snow.

A square of thin sunshine moved across the floor. It had neared the window when high clouds obscured the sun of March; the square yielded, grayed, vanished, like Ben's own trust in ancient certainties. Footsteps sounded often, not for him. Voices flowed on somewhere; Ben heard the homely commotion of household activity--doors closing, the hiss of sweeping, a shovel sc.r.a.ping ash from a hearthstone, clatter of kitchen gear.

Continually his ears strained for Reuben's treble or a light tread that would be his. But plainly Reuben was forbidden to come to him. Someone would, some time soon, he supposed. Someone in authority would be obliged to deal with the wild beast, the blasphemer.

He sprawled on the bed, raising his right knee to soften the nagging of the splinter-wound. Anxious to avoid the refuge of sleep, he fell into it anyway, having had little or none last night, and woke to what was surely the pallor of late afternoon. The house was quite silent; maybe everyone had gone to the Lecture Day sermon. In spite of himself he slept again, and roused, feeling ill and disoriented, in total dark.

From the window small lights could be found twinkling over on the left where the hill road must be. Ben groped for the stub candle on the mantel, and fought a dreary battle with his tinderbox, winning at last the consolation of a pale candle-flame. His knee felt hot, and throbbed.

He let down his breeches but could find nothing very wrong. The splinter-wound was slightly raised; he saw or imagined faint steaks of red up his thigh. His clothing must have chafed the wound while he slept. As he moved sluggishly about the room the throbbing ceased and he could forget it. The lightheadedness--that would be hunger. Anger was no longer hot but heavy, lead in the stomach.

He thought what had roused him had been a murmur of talk somewhere. He no longer heard it. Nothing happened; no one came. The flame of the candle worked downward. One of the lights near the hill road winked out, a friend gone away.... Cry out? Rattle the door, bang on the walls?

Pride as well as caution forbade. They could not keep this up forever.

Ben Cory of Deerfield could wait them out....

From slumped dejection on the bed, Ben saw the door opening so gradually and softly that he feared his eyes were playing a trick. Even as Reuben slipped in and closed the door with the same caution, Ben was slow to believe it. Reuben had not even troubled to lay a finger over his lips, certain that Ben would smother any sound of greeting.

Reuben's shirt bulged. He lifted from it a rolled-up length of harness leather five or six feet long, and crossed at once to the window. As Ben joined him he spoke sparingly, in an undertone that would not carry so far as a whisper: "Must be now--we'll have no other chance. I have some food. Bit of new snow, maybe enough to hide our tracks."

They worked together in silence and complete understanding, easing the window open, fastening the end of the strap to a shutter-hook. Though far short of the ground, it lessened the drop to reasonable safety. Ben let himself down first, dropping easily on the old snow. Large soft flakes of the new were dreamily floating. He stood in silence with waiting arms.

"Ah, what happened to the day?"

"Ben, hush! We mustn't be heard talking in the street...."

"Right, here, Ru. Up the hill and east...."

"That might be the last house, you think?"

"Hope so."

"The day was a bad dream, Ben. Take this--you ha'n't eaten all day. Got another half-loaf under my shirt, and a chunk I cut from a ham I found in the shed, all I could carry.... Think this'll cover our tracks?"

"Not unless it thickens some."

"Pray it does."

"Nay, it better hold off a while or we'll lose these sled-tracks and direction with 'em...."

"I cursed old Anna when she was holding me. She--I mean Grandmother--made me wash my mouth with vinegar, then I must sit not moving all morning. Then they all went to meeting but Jonas, who locked me in a closet so he could mind his ch.o.r.es. d.a.m.n them all, I say G.o.d-d.a.m.n them!"

"Hush, Ru! Grandmother only thought----"

"I say she doesn't think. I say she hath no heart at all, and your mouth'll be scarred all your days like Sam Belding's head."

"It will not--and don't speak so loud. Could be houses back of those trees, it's too dark to be sure."

"I will be quiet, Ben, but I say I cannot forgive her nor I will not, and I'll sooner die in the snow than ever go back in that house."

"We can't go back, that's sure. But Ru, to her we were--don't you understand?--sinful. And I _was_, too--I ought never to have spoken to her so. I lost my head somehow."

"But Mother, or Father, or anyone with a heart, would have forgiven anything you said at such a time. I cursed you, when I was out of my wits. You forgave at once, when I reminded you you could scarce remember it."

"What you said _was_ nothing. What I said to Grandmother was--well, too much somehow. There's a strangeness--let's not think of it. We need all our wits to find the way here.... Can you make out the sled-marks? My eyes don't feel just right."