Wilderness of Spring Part 44

"The _Iris_? I heard about Mr. Dyckman of course, everyone has."

"A s.h.i.+p, that should have brought him a great return, taken by pirates off Virginia. Ben is worried about his affairs, knowing more of them than I do. That's one reason why he hath so set his heart on sailing and earning his own way."

"So?"

"Yes. Mr. Welland, you and Uncle John--you are both very kind. I will not disappoint you. I can work."

"Not exactly kindness. On my part at least, let us call it--mm-yas--recognition, and no more of it for the present, because--well, because the subject is complex and I must presently be off again, almost to Dorchester, d.a.m.n the luck. There was a message for me at the ordinary. I've only time to s.n.a.t.c.h a bit of rest for me and Meg, and a quick meal, and a--I think, a change of shoes.... He never spoke of the _Iris_--well, he and I are not well acquainted. Certainly he hath a marvel in that ketch _Artemis_. He was good enough to take me aboard for a few minutes. I'm no sailor, but even I can see she's no common sort."

"Was Shawn there? A black-haired Irishman with a green coat?"

"Why, no, I noticed no such man, but there were many about."

"You would have noticed and remembered him."

"Mm? Mr. Kenny introduced me to two or three there at the wharf--Captain Jenks, and the mate, who was here, there and everywhere with scant time for landsmen."

"The mate? What was his name?"

"Why, Hanson, I think--don't you know him? We exchanged some little talk about New Haven, where he comes from, seeing I lived a year there once.

Everyone was in a whirl of last-minute business. I felt in the way.

Never knew there were so many different ropes to trip over."

Reuben set the shoes aside. "Last-minute business?"

"Why, yes." The doctor glanced down, puzzled. "What's the matter, Reuben? What did I say to disturb thee?"

"Did Uncle John say when _Artemis_ was to sail?"

"Why, today. You didn't know?"

"No, I--pray tell me about it."

"Well--he said she ought to have sailed that day, yesterday, but they were waiting on some cargo from Gloucester, salt fish I believe, that hadn't come, and Captain Jenks all of a growl about it. They left it that they would wait till today, and if it still had not come she'd sail and--let me think--put in at Sherburne on Nantucket, and find what the islanders might offer to fill her hold. To my ignorant eye she already looked low in the water, but Captain Jenks was swearing she'd ride sweeter for another twenty ton, and a dirty shame--not his exact words--she should sail light."

"And then New York, from Sherburne?"

"Why, no, Reuben--Barbados, thy great-uncle said."

"Ah!... Thunder!--she may be gone before he's at the office. Ben hoped to sail, Mr. Welland. His heart was set on it. He was all one ache for it. He left for Boston only an hour ago, with no notion that _Artemis_ was to sail today, only hoping to persuade Uncle John to let him sign on. I felt, sir, as if I was saying good-bye. He felt it too."

"I'm confused. Isn't he for Harvard in the autumn, with thee?"

"Yes, but he hoped to make a quick voyage to New York and return. It was his idea she should go there, and d.a.m.n it, the proposal was most sensible. Uncle John might at least have considered it. Now he'll be heartbroken. Maybe I _was_ saying good-bye to him, and not in the way I thought. He won't be the same when he comes home, not after this."

"Surely, Reuben, you're making too much of it."

"I know him, Mr. Welland. Certainly Uncle John meant it for the best, but it won't do. You can cross Ben, disappoint him, be harsh with him, but d.a.m.nation, you can't deceive him, never mind if it may be for his own good--he won't bear it." And yet even as he spoke Reuben knew that his own strongest feeling was unwelcome, unreasonable relief: Ben would not sail, not yet.

"Mm-yas, I begin to see.... Reuben, why do you speak as if he were somehow your charge? He's the older. He must find his own way."

"That's true, sir. I even tried to tell him so this afternoon. To tell him that I had been--oh, too much my brother's keeper, and was sorry for it. I think he understood."

"Then let it be. If he's hurt and angry about this, it will pa.s.s. You've only to stand by and be a friend to him until it does. Don't make it more important than it is. I'm sure that after the first day or so, Ben will not."

"I hope so." Reuben hugged his knees, watching the fire. "I hope so, and I'll do as you say. And still I feel as if I had said good-bye to him."

"I suggest that much of living consists of saying good-bye. I suggest that a man says good-bye to his wife when they fall asleep in the same bed, the morrow's morn being a new region in the journey that can't be known till they meet there together. If they do. At certain times we are more aware of saying good-bye, that's all. As presently I must h'ist my creaky bones out of this comfort, change to those good shoes, and say good-bye to thee for a while. By the way, if study should come hard this evening, let it go. Thou dost look, as a matter of fact, very tired."

"Nay, I--maybe I am.... Dorchester, you said? Might I not go with you?

You said a while ago that soon I could go with you on your rounds."

Reuben heard Mr. Welland catch his breath. "Not this one!" As often in bothered moments, Mr. Welland took snuff. "The message at the ordinary was--fi-_choo_-shoo!--garbled as usual, but having dissected out the fleck or two of not-so-golden truth from the rubbish, I have some reason to fear smallpox. That's in confidence, Doctor." He poked Reuben's shoulder, smiling a little but also stern. "Not a word to anyone. If it's true we'll all know it shortly, but if not there's no reason to set people's hearts a-squirming. Lord G.o.d, it comes, and comes again, and again, and we live like sheep on the side of Vesuvius, never knowing.

Reuben, I sometimes think--and you'll have bad moments of thinking it too--that all we doctors do is no whit better than what the Inj'ans do, howling and screaming and beating drums around a sick man's hut to scare away the demons. Do you know that in all history no epidemic hath ever been overcome, nor even much lightened? It strikes, runs its course, and we stand helpless, making motions in the air. And yet one would think that if contagion could somehow be prevented--but where doth it breed?

We don't know. What _is_ contagion? We don't know. Why should a thing like the black plague have struck at England as it did some thirty years ago, and then after blazing and slaying for a time, simply fade away, for no reason men can see? Don't know, don't know. Sir Thomas Sydenham, a great venerator of Hippocrates by the way, was much concerned with epidemiology; I remain skeptical as to his conclusions. Galen, the great Galen to whom they say we must all bow down--Galen evades; I would have thee most cautious, Reuben, with regard to all the doctrines of Galen.

If at Harvard they give you Galen as a final authority, be polite, but read in private the works of Sydenham--and even Paracelsus for that matter.... I'll tell thee an almost comical thing: I have lived fifty-three years, have read much and pondered, have spoke with a goodly number of learned and thoughtful men, and I have never, never satisfied myself as to a proper definition of good health."

"May it be, that state wherein flesh and spirit (the two indivisible, I think) are free to act as fully as the condition of a social being will allow?"

"Reuben...." The doctor was leaning forward in his chair, frowning intently, hands clasped before him. "Reuben, you did not give me that on the spur of the moment."

"Why, no, sir. I was fretting at that question the other night--only I came to it from the other side, wondering, what is disease? I wished a broader definition than any I found in the books, and so searched a little, but I don't know that it satisfies me altogether."

"I think--mm-yas--I think I will accept it until such time as you give me a better.... It takes no account of theology of course. But then, I cannot entertain the thought of a punis.h.i.+ng G.o.d. Nor even a personal G.o.d perhaps. If personal, then in some way well beyond man's imagination. It often amazes me, that others can find such great comfort in the notion of a punis.h.i.+ng G.o.d. Yet they do."

"It saves them from thought."

"Eh? How's that?"

"I think it saves them, sir, from the pains and trials of thought."

"Keep thy sharpness, Reuben. Thou hast already a summer heart and will not lose it. Keep that thorn in the tongue. Hide it almost always, but use it at need, never mind if others wince or even hate thee for it. Sir William Harvey was an angry man, too much perhaps, yet without the thorn in his tongue I dare say no one would ever have heeded him. I have none myself." Mr. Welland bent down, short of breath, to fumble at his shoes.

"In anger I am--mm-yas--most ineffectual, a poor thing. I flush and mumble, lose all command of my thoughts. Anger requires a coolness I do not possess." He groped for the shoes Reuben had cleaned, and slipped his feet into them, and sighed. "Ah, that's better--my most comfortable pair. Thou art both cool and warm." Mr. Welland's fingers fussed awkwardly at the shoelaces; Reuben would have helped him, but had been unreasonably shaken by the words and did not trust his face. "I suppose that is one reason why I love thee."

Reuben thought: He is speaking only as convention allows; I must not make it mean what it cannot. He said rather clumsily: "Mr. Welland, if I'm to be a doctor, some time I shall be obliged to attend smallpox cases, whether or not I have the disease and the immunity it brings."

"But not now!" said Mr. Welland sharply. "Well--they say it's worse for the young--and mine own observation--thou art still growing. I will not see--I will not allow--no, not now!" he said, and having laced the shoes after a fas.h.i.+on, he rose and went to the door. "I must go."

Still at the hearth, watching the fire because his vision needed a refuge, Reuben asked: "Sir, may I detain you for one question more?"

"Of course."

"Mr. Welland, I am fifteen. I have a man's body--came to the change two years ago, nor am I ignorant of its meaning. Why have I never desired women?"

The fire murmured in peace; Reuben held out his hand to it, watching the aureole of light around the fingers cleanly defined. Eventually Mr.

Welland spoke. "Never ask that of anyone else. I am glad, I suppose, that you asked me. Never ask it of anyone else."

"I never could," said Reuben to the fire. "It would never occur to me."