Wilderness of Spring Part 24

Maneuvered thus against a lee sh.o.r.e with the broadside raking him from bow to stern, Ben mumbled: "'Deed I'm not."

"Not poo," said Charity, sinking him....

"Do you go often to church, Mistress Charity?"

"We're Church of England."

"Oh, so was my mother."

"Then a'n't you too?"

"Well--my father was not a member of the congregation at Deerfield, and my Uncle John is not a churchgoer, nor--nor am I."

"Um. Thought everyone was obliged to go."

"My Uncle John says it was so, years past. Now, if everyone went there wouldn't be meeting-houses to hold 'em.... Do you like going?"

"Mr. Binyon was very wonderful."

"He is--no longer with you?"

Charity shook her head and sighed. "I do treasure his memory. He thundered, as with the voice of many waters."

"He--uh--died?"

"Nay, he went back to England. Later they said his steps went down unto the--that is, he joined--well, somebody. I don't just know. Mr. Mitching is not wonderful. He whuffles. In fact he is...."

"Poo?"

Charity came quite close, and seemed perilously near to smiling. "_You_ said that--but I'll never tell. Nay, I do hold in my heart many things that Mr. Binyon--thundered--but mustn't speak of him, and yet I do sometimes, because everyone says I own the nature of a heedless brat."

"I don't say so."

"You are different. Mr. Binyon spoke as with the voice of angels.

Somebody said he was forty--he didn't look so terrible old.... Were all your people killed at Deerfield, Mr. Cory?"

"My father and mother. My brother escaped, with me. He's fifteen now, and I'm seventeen. And you?"

"Thirteen in May. A sad time--n.o.body will ever listen."

"You don't mean you're going to be thirteen forever?"

"Do not be poo...."

"He's a much better student than I, Reuben is."

"I can read, by the way.... Was your mother very beautiful?"

"Why--yes, Charity, she was. Everyone should be able to read."

"I thought so because you are beautiful."

"Now, Charity! You ought not----"

"I know. Alway, everything wrong."

"Not that, but--oh, never mind.... What do you like to read?"

"Not romances. Faith reads those, by the way."

"I've read but a few." In Mr. Kenny's helter-skelter library, Ben had had a glimpse of Aphra Behn and her long-winded imitators; he had rather enjoyed the swashbuckling of _Oroonoko_. "Our tutor keeps us so hard pressed with the cla.s.sics we can't read much else."

"Um ... Mr. Cory, is it true that swallows spend the winter at the bottom of frozen ponds and streams all naked of any feathers?"

"Nay, I've heard that but don't believe it. They must go south like so many others and return in the spring."

"Um. All the same I drew a picture of some of them under the water all naked of any feathers, and another on the brink--he hath just risen and put his feathers on again." She gulped and stuck out a blunt jaw. "I draw many pictures, when I ought to be sewing. I like cooking if I can cook what I like."

"But sewing is poo?"

"You too would think so, had you been obliged to do it. Would you wish to behold the picture I made of swallows under the water all naked of any feathers and one on the brink?"

"Yes, I would, Charity."

She whirled like a doll on a revolving pole and marched away. Sultan moaned and followed, a slave to duty with a backward glance of apology.

Ben heard other footsteps and rose, too soon, and bowed--too soon, so that he was bent in the middle when Faith entered, grave and s.h.i.+ning and young, preceded by the bulk of Madam Prudence Jenks, who clearly did not expect a hand to be kissed or shaken but held both pale things curled below the twin billows of her bosom and entered the room thus, rather like an angel looking for breakfast, and allowed Faith to help her into a chair, and loomed in it, rather like an angel disappointed but willing to wait. "'Tis most agreeable of you, Mr. Carey, to call upon us in our simple afflicted seclusion."

Uncle John hadn't mentioned that the Jenks family was secluded, afflicted, or simple. The drowned gaze of Madam Jenks suggested she had risen from a rest of ages under water, for the purpose (imposed on her by others) of viewing Benjamin Cory; if he proved not too detestably in need of correction, she might submerge. Ben mumbled how happy he was to meet her. For all their damp opacity, her prominent eyes were not at all blind.

Faith's gold-brown hair lay in soft spirals above her ears; on the coils rested a cap, no such cap as Puritan custom approved but a trifle of frivolous lace--the Mathers would have hated it as one of the stigmata of popery. Her dress today was dead-leaf brown. To Ben it looked uncomplicated and demure, its very plainness encouraging the eye to rejoice in what it held. Surely _she_ could never become gross and overblown, the damask fading to an underwater bleach, dugs swollen to down pillows!

"How charmingly you've done your hair, Mistress Faith!"

"Oh, la, thank you, sir--I merely toss it together so to have it out of the way." (And thank _you_, Charity!) Hands chastely folded, Faith watched him with unmistakable radiance; as Ben dared to meet her eyes she blinked both of them. Ben's heart floated over s.h.i.+ning fields. He must have said the right thing. In fact, as matters looked now he could perfectly well sit down; it might even be expected of him.

With larger sternness Madam Jenks repeated: "Most kind of you to call, Mr. Carey, seeing we have not been much about since our loss, the which one must suffer with fort.i.tude required of us by the Lord in his infinite mercy, very kind of you." A parchment contraption appeared magically in her hand; she fanned the pallid orb of her face in a motion grave and hypnotic.

Faith patted her mother's arm where folds of baby-creases narrowed to a tiny wrist. "Mama, I think Mr. Cory never met Uncle James." Faith's charming double wink instructed Ben not to be even slightly dismayed by sudden Uncle James: she would see him through.

A red enameled comb projected from Madam Jenks' tight-bound hair like the comb of a hen, bobbing so unstably that Ben's anxiety climbed notch after notch. "He did not know James?" Madam Jenks shook her head, but nothing happened. "A pity, seeing he was ever a worthy influence to young and old and would have profited much by knowing him, but G.o.d disposes." p.r.o.nouns, Ben noted, counted for no more than ripples, to be brushed aside by the lady under full sail. Solidly abeam of him, cutting his wind and threatening to broach him just when he was trying to claw off to windward, she seemed to be conveying a message: that Benjamin Cory or Carey must have found it extraordinary difficult to maintain the Christian virtues with no a.s.sistance from Uncle James.

"My father's brother-in-law," Faith interpreted. "He died last year, Mr.

Cory. Mamma thought you might have met him."

"Hadn't the honor, ma'am. I'm sorry to learn of your affliction."

"He resteth in the Lord," said the fat woman, and beamed. "Lived in Cambridge. I trust your grandfather is well?"