Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) (19 page)

The anchor chain came rumbling up, and considering what interesting things the sailors would start doing I asked Patience, “Would you like to go up and watch?”

“No,” she said. “I want to think.” I figured it was likely her brother she had to keep marveling over, so I left her there and went up by myself.

And it was a sight, how the sails unwrinkled and caught the wind and the dock slipped away and the town. I began to not want to see it after all, though, with Patience missing it, so I went back down the steep little stairway and started through the little passage.

There was a finely dressed man there that I couldn’t easy get past. He was friendly and real smiley glad to see me so I smiled too and said, “I been up above seeing how they run this thing,” and he said, “Are you alone?” And I said, “Oh, no, I’m with a lady.” He said, “Perhaps we’ll meet in New-York,” and to be polite I said, “Perhaps,” and then he crowded over against the wall to let me past and I started past and when I was between him and the other wall, he grabbed me.

Well, there wasn’t room enough in that little narrow passage to use any of what I knew about fighting and making a throw and all that, and anyway he had my arms pinned. I said, but not loud (I would’ve been shamed to be found like that), “Let me go. Let me go,” and he said I liked him, he knew I did, and why should I play I didn’t? I said I didn’t like him, and I upped with my knee to knee him but I missed because he bent away and it only made him laugh and ask where I learned
that
little trick? And would I really do harm to the Lady’s Best Friend he had inside there? He said he liked a fish that fought and he wouldn’t let it interfere with our friendship that I didn’t agree right away with him on every detail. He said when I came to my senses he’d give me his card so I’d know where to find him whenever I could get away from my mistress.

I though somehow he knew that Patience was my lover, because that’s a word, mistress, that’s used for that, I think, and it made me kind of weak and nervous,
shocked
to tell the truth, so I stopped struggling for a little second and he thought he had me so he eased off a little. I nearly broke away, but he got a new hold on me, and I began to think I’d have to do all I could. But I didn’t
want
to break his foot or bite his throat, and while I was studying if I might have to, I heard Patience say, very cold and furious, “Let her go.”

Which, just like that, he did, and he picked up his hat so he could have it to take off for Patience, and he bowed but she was giving him a glare I’d’ve died if she ever gave me, and he felt it too, though not the same, naturally.

She touched me to send me ahead of her along the passage. I heard her coming along behind me. “You’d better keep an eye on that one, ma’am,” he called. “You notice she wasn’t calling for help, ma’am.”

She didn’t answer him. I heard her coming along behind me, not fast or slow. I wanted to go fast, myself, but I didn’t want to leave her alone with that man either, even though I kind of knew he wouldn’t lay a hand on
her
. It shamed and scared me clear to my shoe soles to think there was something about me that made him think he could do to me like he did. I don’t see how I could’ve felt much worse if he’d out-and-out humped me, I felt that much soiled, but the worst was feeling I’d brought it on myself somehow.

Then I thought of something worse yet, which was that
Patience
would think I’d brought it on, and think I was soiled. By the time we had the door of the Ladies’ Cabin shut behind us, I was so choked up and dry in the mouth and nervous in the stomach I thought I might fall down.

She stood with her back against the door. I couldn’t look at her. I sat down on the bench and put my hands over my face.

“Did he hurt you, angel?” she asked.

I never heard a word so beautiful as that “angel” right then, but my voice shook anyway when I said, “No.”

“If he did, I’ll kill him,” she said, so quiet.

“He didn’t hurt me. Just my pride.”

She knelt and took my wrists but didn’t pull my hands down. She said, “Are you weeping?”

“No. I’m blushing.”

“Oh, I will, I’ll kill him. I’ll buy a gun and blow his foul head off.” Then she called me words like innocent and pure and her lamb and her treasure, that sounded so sweet coming at a time when I needed them so much.

She stood up beside me and held my head snug against her front. I felt her hand under my chin and let her tip my face up.

“Did he kiss you?”

“No.”

There was so much pain in her face I almost couldn’t look at her, and then I saw coming over her the feeling we’d had before but hadn’t had for weeks lately, from worrying and being watched and being scorned and all, and from her promising her brother we wouldn’t in his house. I felt she could kiss me again the way she used to, except this would be fiercer and not careful about anything and how could it stop and what would become of us? I bowed my head.

She said, “Kiss me!” but luckily I didn’t want to right then. If we’d both felt the same, I just don’t know what.

I stood up, saying, “Not yet. Not here,” and I walked around. I felt almost all right, to think that Patience had her feeling back. I always knew my own feeling would come back, but I did have some little doubt about hers until right then. How it turned out, my doubt was foolish, but who could’ve said ahead of time we wouldn’t just be friends and partners the rest of our time together and never have our glory again? Once your heart’s gone dead from being scorned, nobody can say for sure it will ever grow back. Maybe it was mean-spirited to walk around feeling better when Patience was still getting herself in hand about the kiss she couldn’t have, but it’s what I did.

I also felt comforted to know she’d take my part even when I wasn’t entirely in the right. Then I thought maybe she didn’t realize I wasn’t, and I felt obliged to say, “Maybe something I did made him think – a fine-dressed gentleman like that.”

“He’s a scoundrel and a rascal and a stinking lout and a monster!” She stopped and then said, “What did you do?”

So I told her everything that happened except I couldn’t stand to tell how he called her my mistress. But everything I did myself, I told, and from how hard it was to tell some parts I could see for myself where I gave him ideas. Patience didn’t even have to say. I was afraid she would anyway, but she didn’t.

I looked at her face to see if she was still on my side. She had a new expression, like she couldn’t decide if I was mostly hopeless or mostly dear. The way her eyebrows peaked together in worry seemed to say hopeless, but her eyes said dear, and her little shut-mouth smile and her hand holding mine said the same. I figured the verdict was mostly dear.

She said, “I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”

I said, “I hope we’re not to tag each other every step the rest of our life!”

“No. Just when there are men about, and no other women.”

I said, “But I talked to men all my life. I like men. They know what’s going on. They told me about Genesee.”

“In our country, they all knew you had a huge father strong enough to strangle a bear. We’re not in our country now.”

“But last summer I wasn’t either, and nobody bothered me like that.”

“Last summer you were a boy,” she said.

Then I remembered how Parson sort of bothered me like that, a little bit, not really the same. I thought it was no time to tell Patience so, in case it made her hate him too, right when I was looking forward to getting a look at him again soon.

She looked very worried and in a little while she said, “It may be that one must be a male, or be owned by one, not to be their natural victim.” She sighed, so sad. “It may be that there’s no place on earth for women who refuse to bend their necks to be the wards of males – neatly transferred from father to brother to husband to son to grave.”

I never said that so fancy, but it was what I was trying to tell her when I wanted to stay on like before. Still, now we’d started I didn’t want to go back, and I didn’t want her thinking like that now. The time for thoughts like that was past.

“I may hate men,” she said, sort of surprised at herself.

But I remembered Parson was a man, and Edward White maybe didn’t have the warmest heart but he wouldn’t jump on somebody in a passageway either. I pinned Patience down to admit she didn’t hate them all, but just that one. And we agreed about him.

“I despise him,” she said.

I said, “He took his hat off to you.”

“Which had fallen off in his struggle with you! Oh, I may kill him after all!”

I had an idea. “No, Patience, listen!” I said. “Don’t you see, it was
me
. He thought he could, somehow. But you he took his hat off to. Because you’re a lady and I’m not.”

“I’m not a lady. I’m an ordinary country woman. I milked my cows. I forked away their dung. I helped in the fields at harvest.”

“No, you’re different. Didn’t everybody say so? And when I come back last fall, everybody sounded strange to me, how they talked, but you. Because you talk like Parson and them. I’m used to it now, but then I could hear it.”

She smiled a little. “So there’s a use at last for what Miss Amelia taught me. Scoundrels tip their hats.”

“Well, wouldn’t you druther?”

“I druther be like you – ”

“Do I sound like
that
?”

“ – and have no difference made between us.”

“Well, that’s what I mean.
Teach
me!”

She said, “I can’t. I love you the way you are. I can’t bear to – imply – that you need to be – brought
up
– to some – false – I can’t, Sarah. It would destroy our love.”

I said, “Why, honey, I know my worth. I’d never dast’ve courted you unless I did. I don’t say how I am is lower. It just gets me in trouble out here. There’s ways I need to know, like I needed reading, and it don’t mean you think you’re a princess if you show me.”

I
know
how short a time ago I was moping because she wouldn’t let me carry the trunks. It shows how deep that man scared me, how fast I changed my tune.

She said, “I’ll tell you what. You stay here and I’ll go up on deck, and if I can get back without being indecently approached, I’ll teach you all Miss Amelia taught me.”

“I don’t want you up there alone!” I said. “I won’t let you! Just teach me. In time for New-York.”

She smiled, and I could see I’d more or less been led. She never meant to go up on deck, and I think she really did hope all along to change my out-in-public manners, but tricks that come from sparing my feelings I can’t get much upset at.

Later Parson asked about the trip, if we got scared in Hell Gate and like that, and we had to admit we didn’t really notice Hell Gate or anything else much. We just stayed in that mean little Ladies’ Cabin and worked on me. We’d feel the ship stop all along the way, and hear the captain auctioning again, but we never went up to look.

I’ve regretted since the fine sights we missed, but I’m just as glad we didn’t know about Hell Gate till it was passed. To think how Patience might’ve sunk, bound round with gold like that! And nothing, nothing I could do to hold her up. I shake even now, to think.

As to fixing me up, Patience didn’t rightly know where to start. She had me stand up in front of her while she looked me over and thought. I couldn’t’ve felt more foolish than I did standing there like a big gawk, and I might’ve called the whole thing off except I remembered it might be the secret of how to move safe in the world without a man.

She decided to make the first thing be, to stand there. Just stand there, with my arms hanging down and my hands folded loose together in front, which meant no fidgeting and no putting my foot up on the bench and no feeling around for pockets to rest my hands in.

“Feet closer together. Closer still. That’s right,” she said. “No, don’t look at me. Just gaze –
idly
. Into space. See nothing. Unfocus your eyes. That’s pretty good. Now stay that way.”

“How long?” I asked, without moving my lips.

“That’s
good
! No, don’t move. I mean, it’s good you already know how to talk without moving your lips. It’s an essential lady skill. It’s for talking about someone who is in the room. I’ll tell you when to move.”

It was so hard. I remembered seeing ladies everywhere standing that way at stores and outside of churches and all around, and I wondered why I never thought before how hard it might be. I was tireder after a few minutes of it than after a day’s work. When Patience let me stop I just plunked myself down beside her.

She said, “While you’re resting, you can practice not hearing. Now, gaze idly. See nothing. ‘Well, little lady, what’s a pretty little thing like you doing so far from home?’”

I stared at her.

“No, no! Don’t
hear
. ‘I like the little one myself.’ ‘No, she’s a mite on the plump side for my taste. And redheaded – that’s a mean disposition every time – and look at those beady little mud-colored eyes!’ Stop laughing. This is serious.”

I pulled myself together. It was serious.