John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Now 'tis plain," McEvoy said. "He carried her off and keeps her hid in the cabin ye spoke of! How is't the sheriff hath made no move to find her?"

" 'Tis also plain thou'rt innocent of provincial justice," Ebenezer put in bitterly. "Only the virtuous run afoul of Maryland law."

"Nay, now, ye put your case too strongly," said the trapper. "Our courts are sound as England's in principle; but 'tis a wild and lawless bailiwick they deal with — frauds and pirates and whores and adventurers, jailbirds and the spawn of jailbirds. I don't wonder the courts go wrong, or a judge or two sells justice o'er the bar; at least the judges and courts are there, and we'll make their judgments honest when we've the power to make 'em stick — which is to say, when the spirit o' the folk at large is curbed and snaffled."

Ebenezer's cheeks tingled, not alone because he felt that he had in fact overstated his indictment: his day in the Cambridge court still rankled in his memory, and the price of it drew sweat from all his pores; but his wholesale rancor had got to be something of a disposition, and he had been alarmed to recognize, as the trapper spoke, that he fell into it of late, on mention of certain subjects, more from habit than from honest wrath. So grossly had Maryland used him, he had vowed to smirch her name in verse to his children's children's children; could such outrages dwindle to the like of actors' cues? It was by no progress of reason that he reached this question, but by a kind of insight that glowed in his mind as the blush glowed in his face. By its troubled light, in no more time than was required for him to murmur, "I daresay" to Harvey Russecks, he beheld the homeless ghosts of a thousand joys and sorrows meant to live in the public heart till the end of time: feast days, fast days, monuments and rites, all dedicated to glories and disasters of a magnitude that dwarfed his own, and all forgotten, or rotely observed by a gentry numb to the emotions that established them. A disquieting vision, and no less so to the poet was his response to it. Not long since, he would have gnashed his spiritual teeth at the futility of endeavor in such a world. Not improbably he would have railed at human fickleness in allegorical couplets: the Heart, he would have declared, is a faithless Widow: at the deathbed of her noble Spouse (whether Triumph or Tragedy) she pledges herself forever to his memory, but scarcely has she donned her Weeds before some importuning Problem has his way with her; and in the years that follow, for all her ceremonious visits to the tomb, she shares her bed with a parade of mean Vicissitudes, not one of them worthy even of her notice. Now, however, though such fickleness still stung his sensibilities (which is to say his vanity, since he identified himself with the late Husband), he was not sure but what it had about it a double Tightness: "Time passes for the living," it seemed to say, "and alters things. Only for the dead do circumstances never change." And this observation implied a judgment on the past, its relation to and importance in the present; a judgment to which he currently half assented. But only half!

The trapper resumed. " 'Twas just a few days later I saw Billy again, coming out of Trinity Church — aye, I swear't, just a Sunday since! He was knee-hosed and periwigged like any gentleman, not a trace o' bear-grease on him, and for all some folk misdoubted what to make of him, the rector and he shook hands at the door and spoke their little pleasantries cordial as ye please! When I drew nigh I heard him chatting with a brace o' sot-weed planters in better English periods than ye'll hear in the Governor's Council. His companions were two of the same that had tricked him before, but ye'd ne'er have guessed it from their manner: the one was inviting him to join the church, and the other was arguing with him about next year's sot-weed market.

" 'This here's Mr. Rumbly,' they said to me, 'as decent a Christian gentleman as ever shat on sot-weed.' At sight o' me Billy smiled and bowed, and said, 'I've already had the honor, thankee, gentlemen: Mr. Russecks was generous enough to lend me one of his cabins against the day I raise a house of my own.' We twain shook hands most warmly, and, do ye know, I was the envy of no fewer than half a dozen souls round about, so jealous were they grown already of his favor! Billy declared he had a call or two to pay, after which he wished I'd take dinner at his cabin, and when he'd strolled off, his courtiers gathered round me like fops round a new-dubbed knight. From them I learned that the Church Creek Virgin had set out one day from Roxanne's house and disappeared, nor was heard from after till the day Billy Rumbly came to town, dressed in English clothes, and declared she was his bride. Some said he had made a prisoner of her, and told stories of seeing him torture her over the hearth fire, but others that had spied on him declared she could leave the cabin when she pleased and stayed with him of her own will. To them that took the liberty of calling for a proper Christian wedding, he replied that naught would please him more, but his wife was content with the Indian ceremony he'd performed himself and would have no other, nor would he oblige her against her will.

"In any case, albeit 'twas but a short time since that first appearance, and there was still some talk against him here and there, Billy seemed to have won the heart of every woman in Church Creek and the respect of nearly all the men. He hath great plans for improving everything from the sot-weed market to the penal code, as I hear't, and albeit no man would speak out and say't — me being a Russecks, ye know — 'twas clear they looked to Billy to stand up to my brother Harry soon or late. They have changed allegiance well-nigh to a man; Billy's too strong and full o' plans, and Sir Harry too jealous of his power, for the twain not to come to grips. What's more, rumor hath it 'twas Harry drove Miss Bromly to run off, from trying to have his way with her, and everyone reasoned Billy would have satisfaction of the wretch when the right time came.

"On our way to the cabin — I forgot to tell ye I was the first wight he'd invited into his house and was envied the more for't — on the way out there I told Billy frankly what I'd heard of him and asked him to sort out fact from fancy, but he was so full of his own questions about everything under the sun, he made me no proper answer. Why could not the tobacco-planters form a guild, he wanted to know, to bargain with the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations? Who was Palestrina, and did I think a man of forty was too old to learn the harpischord? Why did Copernicus suppose the sun stood still, when it and its planets might be moving together through space? If a Christian ascetic comes to take pleasure in mortifying the appetites, must he not gratify them to mortify them, and mortify them to gratify them, and did this not fetch him to a standstill?"

Mary Mungummory shook her head. "So like my Charley, rest his soul! Had the De'il's own packsack o' questions, and no man's answers pleased him!"

Ebenezer pressed the trapper for tidings of Miss Bromly. " 'Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion! Innocence is like youth," he declared sadly, "which is given us only to expend and takes its very meaning from its loss."

" 'Tis that makes it precious, is't not?" asked McEvoy with a smile.

"Nay," Mary countered, " 'tis that proves its vanity, to my way o' thinking."

" 'Tis beyond me what it proves," Ebenezer said. "I know only that the case is so."

Russecks then went on to say that he had found the cabin (which already he had ceased to think of as his own) in excellent repair, its windows newly equipped with real glass panes and the grounds around it clear of brush. In the dooryard stood a recently constructed sundial, perhaps the only one in the area, and atop one gable was a platform used by its builder for readier observation of the stars and planets.