John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

Mrs. Russecks lost no time in greeting the visitors at the door.

"This here's my wife Roxanne," the miller said proudly. "The noblest damned lady on the Eastern Shore."

"Enchant é," McEvoy said, and to Ebenezer's horror, embraced the woman in a loverlike fashion and kissed her ardently.

"Out upon't!" cried the miller, drawing his sword. "I say, dammee, give o'er! What in thunder d'ye do there, 'pon my soul?"

McEvoy released his bewildered partner, feigning annoyance and surprise. "Whate'er is thy husband alarmed at, Madame? Can it be he's ignorant of the Whitehall Salute? Have ye not schooled him in the customs o' the court?"

Mrs. Russecks, still taken aback by the sudden embrace, managed to confess the possibility that she herself might be out of touch with the very latest fashions in behavior at Whitehall.

"I'll have his lewd head!" the miller threatened, raising the sword.

"My dear friend," McEvoy said, serene and patronizing, "at court 'tis the practice for every proper gentleman to embrace a lady thus on first meeting her; only a bumpkin or a cad would insult her with a sniveling bow." He went on to declare, before Russecks could object, that while he quite appreciated the difficulty provincial gentlemen must have in keeping up with London society, he considered it therefore of the first importance that they maintain an open mind and a humble willingness to be instructed.

"Now put away your sword, that no gentleman should raise without cause, and be so kind as to present us to your daughter."

Russecks hesitated, clearly torn between his desire to keep up with the fashions of the court and his reluctance to deliver Henrietta into the visitors' embraces. But his wife took the matter out of his hands.

"Henrietta, bestir thyself!" she scolded through the doorway. "The gentlemen will think thou'rt uncivil!"

The girl appeared at once from behind the jamb, curtsied to both men, and prettily presented herself to McEvoy for her Whitehall Salute, which the Irishman executed with even more él an than before. At the same time Mrs. Russecks went up to Ebenezer and said, "We're most delighted to have the privilege, Sir Benjamin," so that he was obliged to do the same whether he would or no, and again with the eager-eyed, ash-blond daughter who came after, still flushed from McEvoy's kiss, while the miller looked on in helpless consternation.

Mary Mungummory beamed. "I'll just be yonder at the inn if there's aught ye should want o' me," she called.

"Then ye may stable your horse right now and pay me her day's keep in advance," Russecks said crossly.

Mary did as she was told and left, but not before Ebenezer observed an exchange of glances between her and Mrs. Russecks. At a moment when her husband was boasting to McEvoy that he collected a day's stabling charge on every horse brought into Church Creek for more than half a day, Mrs. Russecks had looked at Mary as if to ask, "Can it be that this brash young man has actually deceived my husband?" and further, "Do I dare believe his intentions are what they seem?" Mary's response had been a wink so large and lecherous as to set the poet tingling with apprehension.

McEvoy now expressed a desire to be shown the operation of the mill, explaining that though Heaven knew he himself had seen enough of them in the past several weeks, his friend Sir Benjamin, who had been raised in London, might find the device amusing.

"Aye, indeed so, young sirs," Russecks agreed. " 'Twill be a pleasure to show ye! Roxanne, you and Henrietta begone, now, whilst I take the gentlemen through my mill."

"Oh prithee, Father," Henrietta protested, " 'twill be a lark for us to go with ye! We're not afraid to climb ladders with the gentlemen, are we, Mother?"

"Nay, dammee!" cried the miller. "Get ye gone, ere I raise a welt athwart thy — "

"Not another word," McEvoy said firmly. " 'Tis the mark of a well-born lady to crave a bit of adventure now and again, don't ye think? My arm, Miss Henrietta, an it please ye." The girl took his arm at once, and Mrs. Russecks Ebenezer's, and any further expostulations from the miller McEvoy prevented by a series of pointed questions about the establishment.

"How is't a gentleman stoops to milling?" he wanted to know as they entered the building.

"Ah, well, sir — " Russecks laughed uncomfortably.

" 'Tis as Mary said — Miss Mungummory yonder, what I mean — ye might say I run it purely for the sport of't, don't ye know. 'Tis beneath my station, I grant ye, but a man wants something to fill his time, I always say."

"Hm."

Walking behind them, Ebenezer saw the Irishman reach boldly around Henrietta's back with the arm opposite Russecks and give the girl a sportive poke in the ribs. He blanched, but Mrs. Russecks, who saw the movement as plainly as had he, only squeezed his arm and smiled. As for Henrietta, she showed surprise but not a trace of indignation at the cavalier advance; when her escort repeated it — simultaneously asking the miller why, if his work was in the nature of an avocation, he charged such wondrously profitable fees for doing it — she was hard put to stifle her mirth. She caught his hand; he promptly and unabashedly scratched her palm, and Mrs. Russecks, instead of unleashing maternal wrath upon the seducer as the poet expected, sighed and dug her nails into the flexor of his arm.

"Stay," McEvoy said, cutting into the miller's explanation that what revenue came from the mill was turned to community improvements such as his inn and the tobacco storehouse he was constructing farther down the creek. "I've an urgent private question, if ye please."

With a mischievous expression he whispered loudly into Russecks's ear that he sorely needed to know whether the improvements of the place included a jakes, and if so, where a man might find it in a hurry.

"Why, marry, out in the back, sir," the astonished miller answered, "or thou'rt free to piss in the millrace, e'en as I do. What I mean — "

"Enough: ye quite overwhelm me with hospitality. I'll use your millrace and fore'er be in your debt. Adieu, all; on with the tour! I'll o'ertake ye presently."

Thus abruptly he left them, followed by the ladies' marveling eyes; when he returned a few minutes later he clapped Russecks on the back, called him a poet and philosopher for having hit on that wondrous virtue in a millrace, and with the other hand treated Henrietta to a surreptitious carnival of tweaks, pats, pokes, and pinches, so that she seemed ever on the verge of swooning from mirth, titillation, and the effort it required to betray nothing to her father.

"Isn't he the bold one?" Mrs. Russecks whispered to Ebenezer. The poet was mortified to observe the lady's respiration quicken, and guessed she envied her daughter's having drawn the more adventurous partner. But for all his desire to question Mrs. Russecks closely on the matter of Miss Bromly, he had no taste for adulterous flirtation, nor would have even had the circumstances been less perilous and less remote from their pressing business with Billy Rumbly. His body stiffened, and when Mrs. Russecks, aping Henrietta's behavior with McEvoy, slipped a playful hand into his breeches pocket as they moved single file along a catwalk near the grain hopper, his blood ran cold. He was immensely relieved when they came out at the rear of the mill, facing the stable.

"There now, sirs," Harry Russecks said, "ye'll agree there's not a better-kept mill in the Province, will ye not, nor a better run?"

"As to the first, ye may not be far wide o' the mark," McEvoy allowed. "As to the second — but stay, I vowed I'd have none o' business till my papers reach me. I will say, 'twas fine sport to poke about in there; I have toured many a Maryland mill, but none so pleasurably."