Arundel (6 page)

“Are you not,” the stranger asked lightly, “held beneath the thumbs of the praying hypocrites in Massachusetts? Do they not intend to use you to take Canada from the French? And that being considered done, and you lively witted country fellows made into disciplined, silent soldiers, what else will there be for you to do but fight England? The English and the New Englanders will hold all the land, and cannot think alike on any subject; and you must agree it has become our way to fight all who think not as we think.”

He smiled coldly and continued. “If you make war against England with the Massachusetts bigots, you must have help; and the only help to be had will be that of the papist French, who will fight even on the side of Boston bigots to be revenged on England. So there you’ll be—you who hate all praying hypocrites and all papist French, fighting side by side with hypocrites and papists!”

His hearers glowered at him, baffled and silent; and the stranger’s pale smile, I now know, was one of contempt for the slow-wittedness of those on whom he exercised his sharp tongue and agile brain.

Cap Huff’s chair creaked noisily as he moved uneasily beneath the stranger’s scornful glance, and he spoke heavily to his next neighbor. “What was it he said we were? He said something about what kind of country fellows we were, didn’t he?”

“Yes; he said we were lively witted.”

“Did he?” Cap said. “I didn’t like the look on his face when he said it. Listen!” He reached across the table and dropped his ham-like hand on the stranger’s arm. “Did you say lively witted or light-fingered?”

The stranger, with no alteration in his frigid smile, looked Cap in the eye and said: “I would be better pleased without your hand on me.”

Cap took his hand away slowly and examined it with an air of mild surprise. “He must have said light-fingered,” he muttered. He leaned forward again. “Listen, stranger—” He stopped there and seemed to rack his brain for something proper to say, but racked it in vain, for he said nothing more.

It was then that Mary came running in from the kitchen to seek her father. He, poor weak-willed man, had fallen forward at the table with his face in some splashings of his rum, and was snoring lustily. Seeing what had happened, Mary sat beside me on the fireplace step, and her hair shone in the firelight, brighter than the buttons on Lieutenant Wattleby’s coat. Shamed at her nearness, I turned from her and so saw the eyes of the stranger looking at her. Their lids half covered them, and they glowed like those of a dog staring into a tree to find a raccoon. He spoke to Kezer, the trader, who sat beside him: “Very pretty, on my soul! A sweet morsel for a cold bed!”

I began to tremble suddenly, though I was not sure of his meaning; I hated him, and if I had known how I would have done him a hurt. I had no need to think of hurting him, however. He was in trouble with others, and more capable than I.

Cap Huff stood up, rubbed his lips with his vast hands, and gave a hitch to his eelskin belt.

“He
did
say light-fingered! I’ll eat two dead sea gulls and a live crow if he didn’t!” He leaned forward and dropped his hand hard on the stranger’s shoulder, so that he turned his eyes from Mary and looked at Cap, very high and mighty; then rose slowly to his feet.

The room was as breathless as a summer afternoon just before a black storm rolls up from the west; but I saw that if the stranger read the sign he did not heed it.

“May I again call your attention to your hand! I’m unused to so much affection from gentlemen!”

“Affection!” Cap repeated slowly, and his face grew fiery red. “Affection!”

He seemed to mull the word over in his mind, seeking the other’s meaning, and it seemed clear he found it; for suddenly he uttered a surprising bellow: a great shocking roar.

“Affection! By God, I’ll show you some!” Before the stranger could move, this mountain of a man had dragged him across the table; then, seizing him by the collar of his buckskin shirt and by his nether part, he lifted him from the floor.

“By God,” Cap bellowed, “I’ll show him some light-fingered affection!”

As I ran ahead and opened the doors, Cap charged through them with the stranger helpless in his grasp, while behind him all the company streamed from the inn, uproarious and cursing with excitement.

The tide was out and the mud of the creek showed faintly luminous in the dull night light. Bellowing still, Cap placed his foot against the stranger’s back and propelled him heartily into the slimy creek bottom. He landed with a mighty slap, slid a foot or more, and lay motionless until our laughter began to fade.

He got slowly to his feet and faced us, and the burst of mirth that had followed his descent ceased entirely.

His features were hidden because of the black mud that covered them, and he was horrible to see. He was like some proud animal disfigured by an ignominious wound, enraged and deadly.

And so, though all of us within that very moment had been screaming with laughter, we no longer saw any fun in the matter.

He uttered no word: he just eyed us; and we stared at him for the length of time it takes a breaker to curl and fall. Then he turned and dragged himself through the clinging muck toward the Abenaki wigwams on the other shore; and somehow his going was more sinister and more menacing than any threatening gestures could have been.

We stood looking after him until he vanished, and I heard my father beside me breathing deeply. At length he spoke harshly to Cap, though it seemed to me his voice was softer than his words.

“Why don’t you go for a pirate, where you belong? God knows what ill luck you’ll bring on us yet. Come in and keep quiet, and I’ll give you enough buttered rum to make you peaceable from helplessness.”

III

I
THINK
I would have slept until long past sun-up on the following morning, and so had my face dowsed with water by my father, had not Cap Huff fallen over me as I lay warmly on my bag of straw by the kitchen door, and knocked sleep and wind from me at the same time.

He gave me a sheath knife, sharp as a razor, when I had let him out as quietly as possible; but quiet was beyond him because he was full of hoarse complaints of his head, which he said held seventeen rusted nails driven through from ear to ear. His tongue he damned for being henceforth useless—it had grown to the size of a fair codfish, he said, and then, not content with its prodigiousness, had perversely got itself besmeared with glue and besprinkled with sand until he could scarce so much as waggle it, and feared it were best out at once and he dumb and done for.

As for the knife, I seemed to remember seeing it on the stranger’s thigh before Cap hurled him into the mud. It may be Cap, in the heat of battle, had thoughtlessly plucked it from his opponent’s belt; and that reminded me to scrutinize him lest he might be carrying away with him a poke of my mother’s sugar, which would have inconvenienced us somewhat.

The wind was still in the east as Cap bawled his farewells and rode westward toward the beaches and the curved blue line of the Wells shore. The rain had ceased and the crows were hard at work squabbling among themselves and breakfasting, dropping mussels from a height onto the hard sand, so the shells might be broken and the meat exposed, and this they seldom do unless the weather be about to clear.

I turned from them to find the house astir. My sisters and Mary had carried their straw bags, along with mine, to the penthouse behind the kitchen and were wiping their faces with a damp huckaback towel at the bench beside the kitchen door. I was filled with dissatisfaction at the sight of Mary, for I knew she would soon be leaving; and the world, instead of seeming homelike and gay, became forlorn.

All my life, since then, that same feeling has come back to me as if it kept a mournful anniversary on such an autumn morning, when the dawn is silent because the songbirds have gone away to the South, and approaching winter has set its cold fingers on the house, and the crows carouse at sun-up in the open meadows and on the beaches.

It is a feeling of impending loss, of wasted days, of vanished friendship; and the only cure I know is to fare into the marshes and woods and shoot enough partridges and teal ducks so a pot-pie may be made from their breasts, and to eat the pie before a roaring fire on a sharp night and wash it down with a gallon of mulled cider.

Angry at Mary because I wished to be alone with her and was not, I hung my head, passed her by in silence, and went into the house, where I was sulky to my mother when she gave me corn bread and milk for my breakfast. When I came out I carried the sand buckets with me and said, in a voice I tried to make gruffly indifferent, that I was going to the beach for sand for the floor; but Mary neither looked at me nor spoke; so I plodded alone through the sand dunes with Ranger galloping along to inspect rat and rabbit holes that he considered it his duty to observe daily.

Eunice lay off shore, raising her bullet head and her shoulders high above the rollers and anxiously scanning the beach; and when she saw me slip down from the dune grass into the soft sand she dove through the surf and flopped herself to me, coughing as though afflicted with a consumption, and pressed her wet nose against the calves of my legs. Not being kindly disposed because of my gloom, I kicked her fat side, whereat Mary appeared as if from nowhere and pushed me sharply in the back.

“You stop!” she said. She sank to her knees and put her arms around Eunice’s wet neck, and Eunice blew affectionately in her face.

“Phew! Fish!” Mary cried, sitting back on her heels and pulling Eunice’s stiff whiskers. Offended, the foolish creature hunched herself out of reach to lie on her side and wave one flipper in the air and stare at the sun and make distressful choking sounds, after the manner of seals.

There were many things I would have liked to say to Mary, God knows; but like most children I could never say what I wished, and so said nothing, but silently filled my buckets with sand. She came and stood quietly beside me for a while. Then she murmured: “My father’s well now. When he’s finished his beans and pie, he’ll take me home.”

I knew this was so, and Mary must have known I knew, and surely I showed I was not happy over it. Thinking there was nothing to be said, I continued to fill the buckets and to say nothing.

She waited for me to speak, but getting no word out of me she put her foot on the edge of a bucket and overset it. When I looked at her in surprise she ran from me, laughing, so I ran after her.

Swift as she was, I was soon close enough to catch at her. Thus I was taken unawares when she stopped and turned. My arms were around her before I knew what had happened, and she was pressed close against me. Shamed, I dropped my arms and moved away to dig holes in the sand with my moccasin. I could feel her looking at me, but could not look at her, though I wished to do so.

She turned and scrambled up into the dune grass at the top of the beach. I was angry at her for going, even though I had given her no cause to stay. She stood there without moving for a time: yet I would not look at her, but continued to make holes in the sand and to wish she would come down again.

At length, in a small voice, she said, “Did you mean it last night?” and I, wishful of saying “Yes!”, stubbornly shook my head. Hearing no further sound, I looked up and found her gone.

My surliness left me. Forgetful of the buckets and all else, I leaped up the bank and saw her speeding toward the stockade. Nor, in spite of my cries of “Mary, I meant it! Mary, I meant it!” did she slacken her pace until she came in sight of Ivory Fish on guard at the stockade gate.

Then, walking sedately until I came up with her, she said: “Are you glad you promised last night?” Although fearful that Ivory might know what it was I had promised, I said at once I was glad. Still she was not content, and asked: “Will you hunt for spruce gum with me?”

I knew the woods were not safe, so said, “No: there might be strange Indians from the north.” With that she halted in the very face of Ivory Fish and declared I had not meant what I said if Indians could stop me. I said hastily I would come and had meant everything, which I had.

There was no pleasing her. She must needs imagine impossibilities and ask if I would come to see her even though her father moved far away, to Portsmouth or Boston, or even to Mt. Desert. I said “Yes” to all her questions, caring not how much Ivory Fish might suspect of our affairs. I think she might have made me promise to follow her to the Sugar Islands or to London; but before she could think of these places, her father emerged from the kitchen and beckoned to her. At the same time my mother came out and called to me that I should ferry them across the creek because my father was busy on the river; and I could tell by the way she flapped her apron toward Mallinson that she was eager for his departure.

As I went down to launch the skiff I saw the Abenakis on the far side of the creek had taken down their wigwams, so I knew most of the women and many of the fighting men had already set off for their winter town. Before the day was done, they would all be gone. This added to my sadness, for the Abenakis had always been kind to me, and I could ask no merrier companions than young Mogg Chabonoke and Fala Ramanascho, nor kinder ones.

They often brought me gifts: an arrow, or a medicine stone against drowning, or a bracelet of horsehair to keep aches from the shoulders in wet weather. They had taught me how to make a fire from a bow and rawhide; how to speak in the Abenaki tongue; how to turn my feet back under me in paddling a canoe so that the posture could be endured for hour on hour.