John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

The trapper was still not entirely pacified, but Ebenezer, though the mixed metaphor made him wince, acknowledged the unknown women's right to their peccadilloes, in order to bring Mary back to her story.

"Aye, Miss Bromly," Mary sighed, "that Roxie tells me I might persuade now to learn my trade."

Ebenezer could not restrain his bitterness. "Is that your notion of a grand and charitable woman, that takes a poor girl in to make a whore of her? Unhappy Miss Bromly! Methinks your Mrs. Russecks is no better than her husband!"

"Gently, gently, Mr. Cooke," Mary said calmly. "Ye forget 'tis not to Sir Harry's mill I'm bound to fetch her, but to the house of her English husband, Mr. Rumbly. ."

"I'God!"

"Let me finish, now. The girl was that distracted by her rape, or whate'er ye choose to call it, she commenced to gibber like a bedlamite. Her name was not Meg Bromly at all, she declared, but Anna Cooke o' Cooke's Point, the sister o' the Laureate Poet, and the salvage that attacked her was no salvage at all, but her childhood tutor — "

"Marry, I see it!" cried the poet. "She hath been Anna's friend and mine since we were children in Plumtree Street; some business hath brought her to Maryland, and she had planned to call on me at Malden until she heard of my disgrace and Father's wrath. Aye, 'tis clear! She durst not go near the infamous place, but took lodgings in Church Creek while she made enquiries about me. I'faith, another lost soul upon my conscience! Poor, poor Miss Bromly; how Anna would fly to aid you if she knew!"

As a matter of fact, Ebenezer's feelings were mixed: he was unspeakably relieved to think that the Church Creek Virgin had not been his sister, but distressed at the same time, not only because it had been his sister's friend but also because this fact rendered Anna lost as ever. Now he blanched, for a new thought struck him.

"Nay, 'tis worse yet! Why would Miss Bromly be in Maryland at all, if not as Anna's companion? Aye, 'sheart, they traveled together — what could be more likely? — and when they heard how things fared at Malden, or when my father caught up with Anna and made her stay with him, Miss Bromly took it upon herself to seek me out. That's it, I'm certain: either Joan Toast made no mention of me, or they disbelieved her! 'Sheart, 'sheart, miserable girl! How many more will be brought low on my account? And now, whether 'tis that she seeks pity by desperate subterfuge or that the shock of rape hath deranged her, she calls herself by her best friend's name, and thinks 'tis Henry Burlingame hath undone her!"

" 'Tis a fact she sometimes calls her husband Henry," Mary allowed. "Roxie said as much."

"Stay, now," McEvoy said. "Ye left the wench in her loft-room, a-babbling to the Russecks woman, and now she's wife to the wight that leaped her, and that she pistoled! Ye've o'er-skipped some piece o' the tale, lass, have ye not?"

"That I have, sir," Mary nodded, "for 'tis Harvey's to tell. When the girl had done a-gibbering she fell a-swoon in Roxie's arms and was fetched senseless to Henrietta's chamber in the millhouse. For three days Roxie nursed her like an ailing child, and on the fourth she disappeared. No man hath laid eyes on her from that day to this save Harvey here. ."

Mary finished speaking and looked expectantly at Harvey Russecks, as did Ebenezer and John McEvoy. But because her last remark had been delivered in a voice lower than that with which she had told the story and had been directed specifically to McEvoy, the trapper missed it and smiled vacantly back at them.

"Tell 'em, Harvey," she prompted. "What happened whilst the Church Creek Virgin was a-swoon at Roxie's, and the rest of it?"

"Aye, that's true," Harvey laughed, not yet conceiving exactly what she said. Ebenezer concluded that the older man's mind must have been wandering, for he had caught up the earlier remark about Mrs. Russecks at once. " 'Twas when I went out on the trap line in the morning — ice all over the marsh, don't ye know, and muskrats frozen in the snares — I spied a campfire down the line and walked over to't to thaw my finger-joints; there lay this salvage with the bloody breeches, his head all shaved and his body cold as death. 'Twas my first thought he was dead, and another two hours had proved me right; but I felt some life in his veins beat yet and resolved to fetch him here and do what I could for him. The wound I found no great matter, for all the blood; I washed and bound it, and forced some hot broth on the fellow directly he could open his mouth. B'm'faith, what a stout wretch he proved! As nigh as the very latch-string to death's doorway, and an hour later he had his senses again, if not his strength. When I'd won his trust he told me his tale as best he grasped it, and inasmuch as I'd heard o' the Church Creek Virgin and knew my brother's humor besides, it wanted small philosophy to guess the rest.

"I told him he'd been the butt of a low prank (the which he saw plainly when I explained it) and offered to ask for the five pounds sterling Harry had robbed him of; he thanked me kindly, in the plainest English I e'er heard salvage speak, and declared the whole of't was mine for rescuing him, if I could get it. Now ye dare not refuse a salvage's gift, lest he think thou'rt insulting him, and so I declared I'd take two shillings for my trouble and deliver the rest to him. All the while we spoke he had been casting his eyes about the room, and anon he asked me, Would I sell him my house? and Would five pounds purchase it? I replied 'twas not worth it by half, but I'd no mind to sell, and as he showed such eagerness to live in an English cabin I told him of an old one I owned near Tobacco Stick Bay, not far from Church Creek, that was falling to ruin for lack o' tenants, and declared he could live in't without rent if he'd trouble himself to repair it. Ye might think that an odd piece o' charity on such short acquaintance, but this half-breed had an air about him — I've not the words for't, sirs. 'Twas as if. . d'ye know those stories o' kings and princes that prowl the streets in Scotch cloth? Or Old Nick posing as a mortal man to bargain for souls? He was uncommon quick in his mind, was this salvage, and gave me to feel that had he been reared English from the cradle he'd have been another Cromwell, or what ye will. 'Tis no mystery to me Miss Bromly took him for her tutor in disguise; with a fortnight's practice he could pass for a don of Oxford, I am sure of't, and two years hence for a sunburnt Aristotle! There's many a man I have no use for, gentlemen, and it struck me from the first this salvage would play me false if need be, to gain his ends; but he had that power of attraction — how doth a man speak of it? Will-ye, nill-ye, ye felt that if his purpose and yours weren't one, ye had your own shortsightedness to blame for't, and if he sold ye short, 'twas that your stuff was the stuff o' pawns and not o' heroes. To this hour he hath done me no injury, but that day I was driven to forgive him in advance, in my heart, for aught he might do me!"

"Ah," Ebenezer said.

"In any case, he slept here that night, and next morning I found him gone. My first thought was, he had set out to revenge himself on my brother — " The trapper blushed, but his eyes narrowed. "God forgive me or not, as't please Him: I made no move to warn Harry of his danger, but went out to my line o' traps as usual. There was a frost that morning, I remember, and over by Raccoon Creek, on a stretch o' high ground betwixt the fresh marsh and the salt, I commenced to see bear tracks along the path, and even a bear stool so fresh 'twas not e'en froze, but lay a-steaming in the path. Not long after, near the end o' the line, I saw moccasin-prints with the bear tracks, and inasmuch as they were not half an hour old, I took the trouble to follow 'em out.