Wilderness of Spring Part 35

Mr. Derry got his legs loose at last, and moved to lean against the door, by that rambling action somehow making them all his prisoners of the moment. The room had been crowded before--Captain Jenks made any closed s.p.a.ce seem so; now, with Daniel Shawn lean and large in his green coat, and Mr. Derry obscurely grown in stature, the little place was stifling as a shut box. "Who are you, sir?"

"Daniel Shawn, seaman. And you?"

"I am Malachi Derry, and Constable. Your name was mentioned but now, Mr.

Shawn. I understand you dined yesterday evening with Mr. Cory here, at the Lion Tavern on s.h.i.+p Street?"

"Oh, I did that," said Mr. Shawn lightly. "And later, Mr. Kenny, I feared maybe I had presumed, but sir, the boy and I were both at a loose end, you might say, and most pleasant conversation we had, and no harm in it, I hope?"

"Oh, none," said John Kenny, groping at something in his mind. "I wish Ben might have let me know, but that's unreasonable of me, for I don't know how he could, seeing I left early for Roxbury. Ben, you had something more to tell?"

"Yes, and I'm glad Mr. Shawn is here, for he'll remember it too. There was a man seated at the back of the tavern when Mr. Shawn and I went in, a total stranger, a one-eyed man I'd know again if I saw him, no matter how far away, and--oh, it can't be important, only a feeling I had----"

"Now I will judge of that," said Malachi Derry, and came alive, leaning away from the door with the sudden monstrous tension of a cat who has just sighted a wriggle in the gra.s.s. "A one-eyed man?"

"Ay, a black patch, over the left eye. And the only reason I mention him, sir, is that when Mr. Dyckman and Ball left the place, this man rose at once and followed them out, but until then he had been sitting idle with the flies gathered on his empty trencher, and when I first saw him I had a feeling that he was--oh, waiting for something."

Captain Jenks shook his head in grim disgust.

"The left eye, Mr. Cory? You are certain?"

"Yes, Mr. Derry, the left eye. He was--not the common sort. I'd know him again, anywhere. Shabby clothes, black, patched. Tall, thin, a gray diagonal scar across the back of his right hand, and on his face a mad fixed smile such as I never saw on any man before."

"Oh, come!" said Captain Jenks. "May we not have the precise height of this hobgoblin, in inches and fractions?"

John Kenny said carefully: "Mr. Derry, I have sometimes walked with Ben in the woods. Though an old man, I did not know until then how much the human eye can grasp." Ben warmed within; he saw Reuben smile as if the small triumph were his own. "You may take it, Mr. Derry, it was the left eye, and with this pencil--catch, Ben!--he can draw you an accurate sketch of the diagonal scar."

"No need," said Mr. Derry softly, examining the ceiling, a little relaxed. "I happen to know of mine own knowledge, the description is just." His gaze wandered here and there, and settled on Daniel Shawn.

"Did you also see this man?"

Shawn considered with gravity. "I think I noticed some such person when we entered. I recall I sat facing the front of the tavern. I didn't notice him leaving, but if it's Beneen says he left soon after Mr.

Dyckman, then sure he did."

"But," said Ben--"oh, I remember. When he pa.s.sed our table, Mr. Shawn, you'd just then leaned to the fireplace, and likely never saw him. One other thing I remember, Mr. Derry--nay, but it was only a feeling of mine, and of no importance----"

"Tell me anyway," said the Constable.

"Why, only that when he pa.s.sed our table, he looked at me, just one quick look from his one eye, and--I can't explain this, Mr. Derry. He did nothing, you understand, only glanced at me and likely with no thought for me at all, and yet I felt as if he'd spat in my face."

"Ay, that," said Constable Derry as if he found nothing strange in it at all, and Ben looked down at the little pencil in his fingers, wondering why Daniel Shawn should suddenly be angry with him. Not anger perhaps; only something probingly cold and measuring in the large blue eyes. It could not really be so, Ben thought. Or if it was so, then it meant that Shawn was hurt or offended because Ben had run away without waiting for him from Mistress Gundy's house....

Reuben watched the glittery ink-blots of Mr. Derry's little brown eyes; heavy brows above them danced for Reuben's troubled amus.e.m.e.nt like busy moths. "Another name was mentioned--a new bosun, Tom Ball--will that mean bosun of your ketch _Artemis_, Mr. Kenny? And could you or the Captain tell me anything of him?"

"I've met him only to shake hands. Peter?"

"Good sailor," said Captain Jenks thickly. "Obeys orders, works hard, keeps his mouth shut--more'n that I never ask of my men."

Except, Reuben thought, their souls and their lives. But how can a captain demand less than that even if he would? Reuben tried to put the thought away, and succeeded, because now every nerve of observation in him had grown taut to the edge of agony, and the focal point was not Captain Jenks. Something in this crowded room was wrong as a rattlesnake in a flower bed. It became a severe effort not to look toward the blue eyes of Daniel Shawn. Reuben forced his attention back to what the Constable was saying--something more about Tom Ball, maybe not important. "Another thing, Mr. Kenny, and I'll be on my way. Have you ever heard tell of one named Jack Marsh, or some say it should be Judah Marsh, or Judas?"

"Why, that name--it doth echo somewhere....

"Think back, sir, ten or eleven years. Eleven it is--'96. An occasion when a certain Captain Avery, or Every, alias Bridgeman and sometimes called Long Ben, was allowed to enter Boston, and that openly, to d.i.c.ker for the sale of his plunder gotten under the black flag. To the great scandal, I must say, of any man who can tell a privateer from a gallows-bird, but so it was, Mr. Stoughton being acting Governor."

Mr. Kenny peered down his nose with the lopsided half of a smile, perhaps suspecting Mr. Derry of humorous intent in linking holy Stoughton with dreadful Avery. Malachi Derry appeared quite innocent.

"Mph, yes, and m'lord Bellomont as Governor had his Captain Kidd, yes yes. Of course, Mr. Derry, I remember Avery, as who would not?"

"We suffered much odious brawling in the town by Avery's men."

"I recall it."

"One of them, known then as Judah or Judas Marsh, did have his left eye gouged out in a brush with--umph--some of the ruder element." A glint in the brown eyes suggested he might not be wholly innocent after all. "It happened near my establishment, though I didn't witness it."

"And I recall the roustabout who blinded him was flogged, and Marsh--(but wasn't it March, Mr. Derry?)--nursed the wound at the Alms House as an idle, drunken and disorderly person."

"And escaped."

"Oh?--that I'd forgotten. So many have done so, and we still continue to use the Alms House, d.a.m.n the thing, because the House of Correction is not in fit posture to restrain ailing rats. And by the way, Constable, if the Meeting shall ever instruct the Selectmen and Justices in this particular, I predict nothing will come of it. Go on, pray."

"Amen, sir. Yes, Marsh escaped after Captain Avery had gone his way.

Later Marsh was seen, oh, here and there--Plymouth, Salem Village--alway with an evil reputation. And disappeared--for good, it was thought--about the time we began to hear tell of John Quelch. A month ago I received intelligence from a worthy man of my acquaintance at Gloucester, who is a justice of the peace and a man of substance." Mr.

Derry swelled comfortably and brushed lint from his jacket, applying the pressure of a genial silence.

John Kenny said reminiscently: "I was obliged to serve a year once as constable, at Roxbury--mph--must confess that lieth further in the past than 1696. Onerous occupation." He smiled like a December thaw. Mr.

Derry looked politely attentive and slightly sulky. Mr. Kenny sighed and obliged: "You heard, from your friend at Gloucester--?"

"I heard that this man Marsh--sometimes his name did appear as March, it's all one--had been hanging about there recent, seeking a berth with one of the fis.h.i.+ng vessels, but because of his foul conversation and ugly habit, none would have him. My informant advised me that Marsh had left, possibly for Boston, and recommended I be watchful, seeing trouble follows this man as stink follows a polecat. Marsh, I hear, is quick with a knife, and nowadays they do call him Smiling Jack. I believe, sir, that thanks to this timely aid from Mr. Cory, we may be able to conclude the grievous happening of last night by persuading Mister Marsh to dance without benefit of a floor."

"Still, what do we know, man?" Mr. Kenny bleakly asked. "Item, he left the tavern when Dyckman did. Any man might have done so for any of a dozen innocent reasons."

Mr. Derry smiled slowly, reached in the air for an imaginary throat, twisted it, wiped his hand lingeringly on his breeches. "Mr. Kenny, if Marsh be found anywhere in the town, I can detain and question him. Why, I dare say he'll be found before Mr. Dyckman must be buried. He shall be brought before the body, and does any man doubt the wounds will bleed?"

"May I be there!" said Captain Jenks to his tremendous hands.

Reuben felt a new sort of sternness in his great-uncle as the small old man leaned far over the desk. "Peter." He waited until the Captain turned to look at him. "Peter, I will not delay the sailing of _Artemis_. When she hath her cargo and her complement, and the tide is right, she'll go, sir, and landside justice no concern of hers."

"Well, John---" Captain Jenks sighed cavernously. "Well, John...." For the dozenth time he rubbed at his flushed face as if cobwebs clung to it; his gaze wandered until it met Constable Derry's, and then he spoke more or less as to a friend: "Find him soon, Constable."

Daniel Shawn had stepped to the window, a little behind Mr. Kenny.

Reuben could see him, his gaunt and handsome face staring away through the smeary gla.s.s. "It's the hard thing such a man as Mr. Dyckman should die, and for what? The poor sc.r.a.p of money he may have had with him--what's money beside a man's life, Mother of G.o.d?"

n.o.body answered him. To the Captain Mr. Derry said: "I expect to find him soon enough, and you have the right to be present when he's examined. You understand, sir, there'll be no interference with the law, no cheating of the gallows, for except I be strangely deluded, the man will hang." Malachi Derry bowed to the room at large and moved to the door on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet.

"And that no great loss, I suppose," said Mr. Kenny. A tumbling of disorderly papers on the desk had threatened to submerge his gold-headed cane. He rescued it and rubbed the handle, that was shaped into an elfin woman's leg and thigh, against the dry sagging skin beneath his jaw.

"But Jan will still be dead."

Stooping for a pa.s.sage of the doorway, Mr. Derry paused to stare in disapproval. "Mr. Kenny, surely you, sir, will not display a froward heart before the will of the Lord? We are insects before his footstool: we do what we may, more we cannot. Is it for us to question the judgment? Did not your friend himself commend his soul to G.o.d? He said: 'G.o.d's will be done!' Amen."