Edgar Pangborn

“ Shawn, that you cannot serve a good end by evil means."
"Ochone!—a Puritan indeed but very young, now that's no lie. I know that talk, that doctrine, Ben, know it of old, a stick to beat the young and no truth in it, and so I deny it altogether."
"I will affirm it while I live. Damnation, Mr. Shawn, it's no article of faith, only a plain observation any man can make. Your great end lies in the future, but the future grows from the present. The evil you do in the present can only generate evil in the future and not the good end you dream of." ”

“ He lives more or less in poverty."
"And still," said Clarissa, to the light—"and still, perhaps even wisdom is not everything."
"Nay, I'm sure it's not," Ben said, and wondered whether it was wisdom he was searching for in the brandy glass, where half of the beautiful amber sparkled as yet untouched. He saw her then, with a more naked vision, as she stood in the light and shadow slight as a child and wholly a woman, in her feminine grace no longer alien. He rose with no thought for the action and entered the same sunlight. "Clarissa, there is more here than I should drink. ”

“ She turned aside to take up her parcel, and Ben rode home—across Boston Neck, past the waters of Gallows Bay, the marshes and the quicksands.
In the nights that followed Ben's return from Boston with a glowing dreambound face, April became May, but Reuben did not slip outdoors while the house was slumbering to walk in the dark woods. He had done so sometimes last year and the year before—usually on summer nights of light airs and starshine when beauty like something dangerous commanded him to approach, even though it be madness or immolation, because to retreat was a sure kind of dying. ”

“ What he had said to Ben concerning storm and calm was banal, he reflected, but truth has a way of hiding in the blur of the commonplace and must be hunted there from time to time: no good rushing upstairs or outdoors in search of a paper that lies on the table under your nose. We do pass continually from storm to calm—every one of us, even Madam Prudence Jenks. So meet them both, in the atmosphere of doubt where honesty is—whether in fog over quicksand, or on firm-appearing ground like this under a sunny sky of June. ”

“ That might be the reason why Captain Jenks wished to keep the breadth of the town between him and the ships that were his daily bread.
Approaching the house, Ben had been sharply aware of second-floor windows, feeling eyes in a way remarkably like fright if only it weren't absurd to be frightened at calling on a girl. Now he held back his hand from the knocker, studying the garden with unstable dignity, suppressing a hope that nobody was at home. He admired the grape arbor, enlivened already by a white and brown of buds, and noted here and there the brave glow of daffodils. ”

“ As Reuben answered that angry shout with nothing but a sick stare, Ben searched in desperation for anything at all that might reach the boy's mind, and could find nothing, thwarted by the barrier that rises or seems to rise between one self and another, and so cried out unthinkingly: "For my sake then! Because I need thee and love thee."
Reuben Cory clung to the power of a fantasy. The snow before him, through which his feet could now drive with amazing patience and force, was not really level but a stairway. ”

“ But out there on the far side of the world, have I not seen an empty island open to the west, where the high rollers came down and down forever with all the blind leagues of the sea behind them, down and down as heavy and slow and sure as the years beating on a man's youth? Have I not seen Pacific moonrise where no land is, and the gray and silver piled higher than the North Star Polaris?"
Ben woke on Thursday before dawn, disoriented in time, noticing how the days and nights of being in love run together like those disquieted by simpler fevers. ”

“ Ben had drifted back into his country of dream. Kate was, abnormally, not talking. Having breakfasted early as usual with Mr. Kenny, who had left for Boston, Mr. Hibbs was waiting in the schoolroom—perhaps not too impatiently, since work could always be done in odd moments on the immortality of the soul. The kitchen, not oppressed by dining-room demands of dignity, was rich with pleasant smells and the warmth of May. Reuben refilled his coffee cup.
If learning begins (ever) it must somehow begin with premises that will not betray. All men are mortal; Ben and I are men.... ”

“ The great shadow of Gideon Hibbs grunted forgiveness. It almost always did. Uncle John, Reuben thought, is another who forgives much, and why did I never think of that before? It seemed to him that Uncle John, frail and gouty and gray, was somehow closely with them here in the dark. Some day, he thought, I shall be old—well, the devil with that! Why think now of poor old Reuben Cory?
Because Ben will go where I cannot? Because an old man must regret the flowers he never touched, mornings when he never saw the sun? ”

“ Some man must have begotten the thing, some woman borne it in pain and maybe loved it a while. Marsh would not even eat like a man, but like a peevish dog, gulping the tedious food and returning to his one-eyed vacancy. For Daniel Shawn Ben had been obliged to learn hatred, a waiting, despairing hatred that even now might hold some tormenting elements of love or at least of searching. Before the stalking dead man Marsh, Ben could only recoil, watchful, glad that, except for the necessary rule of the starboard watch, Marsh let him alone. ”

“ And so she is, he thought, strolling sure-footed away from the beech in the deep quiet of the mist—so she is; and he wondered in passing whether any self ever lived that was not divided by contrary hungers. Occasionally with Charity—when she sat close by him, or pushed at his chest with friendly impatience, or rubbed her cheek on his shoulder in her impulsive way that was half child, half woman—occasionally Reuben could be reminded of those needs the world allows. Never enough, he thought; never complete; never the sure and hearty answer that Ben, for example, would have known. ”

“ Some one of the words must have been wrong, for the little man rose up gibbering from a toothless gap and came for him viciously, the scissors raised like a hatchet. Reuben was able to scream at last and fling himself away——
Into the warmth where Ben—Oh, this is waking!—where Ben was saying: "Hush thee, Ru, hush! Don't be so afeared! I'm here, I'm with thee."
As Reuben slept on, peacefully after his nightmare, morning imperceptibly arrived, a pallor in an unfamiliar window long dark; much more time must pass, Ben knew, before true dawn. ”

“ Just get us out there at the oars in the sun, to tow the old bitch, that's all it needs." His browned sturdy arms spread out along the rail, Matthew Ledyard looked much like a man crucified, his dark face unflinching in the sun. "And I wonder would you be out there too—Mister Cory? Pulling an oar? With your charmed young life, so even the tropic sun won't strike you down? Or back here on the deck belike, so to sail with Captain Shawn when the rest of us is maybe dried up and burnt too black to stink? Or will you now be trundling aft to tell the Captain what old Ledyard said to you?" ”

“ Dummy had two gods now, and the gods were destroying one another, and the world had fallen to bits while he clutched dead love in his tremendous arms.
Ben could not understand how there should again be huge noise behind him, now that he was facing forward and could see them all with his one unclouded eye, the living and the dead. Manuel? Never. The noise was metallic, a crashing jangle, and the repeated thud of some heavy object striking on the deck. He yelled: "God damn you, Shawn, give over!" Shawn might not have heard that. Shawn was staring fixedly over Ben's shoulder. ”

“ The forest beyond the stockade was alive with gray dogs.
"He is compassed about," Ben said, knowing Clarity shared his anxiety. "He may be obliged to sell a tetradrachm of the time of Dyckman." Clarity nodded, moving their crow's-nest back and forth with her little brown hands, so that he could see her body arch and sway, arch and sway, bending and straightening as the wind blew her hair back to him and hid her face from time to time—still he could look down and see Faith walking out through the stockade walls into the woods. ”

“ Reuben said, "the word 'agitate' suggested fluttering. I might translate: 'Why was it that Daedalus fluttered safe wings?'" He glanced up, honestly feeling as apologetic as a puppy caught in flagrante with a ravished shoe. "To me, sir, Daedalus was no butterfly."
Ben knocked his Ovid on the floor and scrambled after it. Reuben guessed he was trying to divert the lightning, but Mr. Hibbs paid the uproar no heed at all, staring at Reuben with a twitching nose. You could never quite predict Gideon Hibbs: the next moment might be hell, or sudden sunshine, or merely another sneeze. ”

“ Shawn, I've asked you a dozen times, and have been refused, and now I say again: I wish to go in that cabin and speak with Captain Jenks."
"And I'll be telling you for maybe the hundredth time, Ben, he is not captain of this or any other vessel.... Ben, with all the charity I've seen in you, can you not hear a man acknowledge his error? I said, no more piracy. I have done wrong, almost betraying my purpose. I say now—and this is like something you once said to me yourself—henceforth I will not lift my hand against any man except to defend my life and my purpose. ”

“ Shawn watched him, smiling, firm on the crazy deck like a weighted doll: let the world swing upside down, that'll stay upright, no fear. "It was the drinks. You drugged me," said Ben, not believing it, praying for denial.
"Ben, go below!" Shawn said that firmly but softly, not unkindly, and moved away forward in rolling ease, the green back vanishing beyond the mainsail, the dark riddle of him immediately replaced by the black riddle of someone else. This also Ben would not believe, this gaunt thing striding aft, its black eye-patch and its frozen smile. ”

“ High clouds drove across the dark toward abiding calm. Ben Cory watched them rolling under west wind down a winter sky, until his father's voice drew him back into the pool of firelight and candleshine. The moment's alarm of loneliness lingered, another occasion when the self disturbed by the not-self desires the assurance of boundaries. Where does the self end and the universe begin? Ben knew the inquiry to be a corridor where many doors open on darkness but not all. ”

“ But you don't think I'm a terrible bad heathen?"
"You are not, but if Ben and I labor with you long enough, love, perhaps we can make you one. I have hopes."
"Oh, you!"
"No, Charity, never mind the pup, you're no heathen, or if you are, then I too. I've no patience with—let's call it mummery. I saw your father die. He was a captain of men, and he died well. No words spoken over his body can add anything to that. Such words are for the living, if they wish them. No one spoke them for Daniel Shawn, and though it may be that I killed him, I loved him too." ”

“ Ben fidgeted. "As for the rest, Beneen, a stallion will need but a moment to cover a willing mare, and in such a house they are willing. I recall a half-ugly wench who would be doing anything you like at all." Shawn laid a finger along his old-ivory pockmarked nose and smiled diamond-like. "I had her once—wasn't it like sinking into a warm dumpling fresh from the oven? One of the others is handsome but cowlike—I'm a-mind to try her, though I fear she'll be watching a spot on the ceiling and do no more for a man's entertainment than if he was a wind at the door." ”

“ For a long time—long anyway to Reuben Cory—the brothers had settled many private arguments by: "We can ask Jesse."
Drunk or no, it had not been right that a tall grown man, an old man, should act the clown. It had not felt right to watch Jesse with the dead lion when his sweating grayish face turned lost and vague and crumpled in a stupid chuckle of apology.
And then as Meco stalked away, Ben had looked around, not smiling but startled, awed—clearly aware, as Reuben was, of an astonished sharing. The Day of the Lion was perhaps the first day when Reuben understood that Ben was a person too. ”

“ Ben himself did not know whether it was the flame of Deerfield that attacked Reuben at such times; had not been able to learn, in all the three years since they came to Roxbury and Uncle John had opened heart and home to them. "Artemis is near three hundred ton, Ben. That's not big, but she could sail anywhere in the world."
The lonely man, blue-eyed and gaunt, who stood at the outermost end of Kenny's wharf, swung about to gaze at the old merchant. Ben had not until now observed the stranger's face, motionless as a boulder in a patch of grass against the raised collar of a shabby green coat. ”

“ He had struggled with Ben's tinderbox to the edge of despair, and won a flame at last, the fire then leaping bravely and settling to steadiness under the endless slanting white, the smoke pushed away from the opening of the lean-to by a faint breeze out of the west. When he had gathered all the firewood he could find without going beyond reach of Ben's voice, Reuben used the stolen kitchen knife to hack off a green ash sapling and trim it to a six-foot spear. ”

“ At the table farthest to the rear, dark as the smoke and like a part of it, a thin man with a black patch on one eye sat by himself, smiling. Before him stood a dirty trencher with the remains of supper, and a pewter mug. He sprawled with elbows hooked on the back of his chair, arms dangling, so quiet he might have been asleep, but the one good eye was open wide and one does not sleep with a frozen smile. When the eye moved to examine Ben and Shawn with no sign of interest, the rest of his face took no part in the act. ”

“ Forgiving a thousand things I'd never take from any other man?"
"Yes."
"But you will use the knife. Have we not spoke together a thousand times like friends? Haven't I made you laugh?"
"Yes."
"But you will use it.... Why?"
"Shawn, do you think I could walk into Heaven across the flesh of Jan Dyckman? Dyckman and others—how many? The men of the Schouven—how many, Shawn? And how many more, before we ever saw the new lands?"
"Does it matter? The vision is greater than the man."
"Nay, I think not, but even let that be so if you wish. ”

“ Ben looked again to Artemis.
"Watch, Ben! Wouldn't you think he was bearing down smack onto the bow of that three-master? She's a New Yorker, by the way. Hoy!" Mr. Kenny danced a stiff caper. "Like an old woman threading a needle! But if the watchman on that Mannahatta tub pissed his britches, no shame to him at all. Watch!"
The lonely blue-eyed man was watching too, in the curve of his long back something hawk-like.
Mr. Kenny relaxed, chuckling. "Ben, I recall you've never met Mr. Jenks. When he's ashore he never visits around, damn the dear man, not even to Roxbury. ”

“ From his father Ben gained some clear perception of the war, the giants France and England raging over old hates and new advantages under two sick and stubborn sovereigns, Queen Anne of England and the doddering Sun King Louis XIV of France—yet the ocean itself was more actual to Ben than England or the war, for Ben's own father had seen it once on a boyhood visit to Dorchester. He said, if your ear lay close on the pillow at night, the murmuring you heard then was not unlike the moaning of breakers on sand, and why shouldn't a boy (said Joseph Cory) send himself to sleep by listening? ”

“ Shawn needed only a moment's study through his glass. His face, that had been smiling, changed to an ivory stillness, and he took the helm.
Artemis, gliding out of Sherburne, had clapped on all sail—jib and topsail and mainsail bellying taut, her fore-and-aft mizzen a great wing of purpose and of splendor. For her the northwesterly was a following wind, not her best wind but good enough; her low-slung bowsprit leaned joyfully to the sparkle of harmless whitecaps, outward bound. ”

“ Word of the death had occasioned a pause in the clamor earlier in the morning; a short one: commerce and the seasons don't wait. The warehouse, Reuben thought, was a roaring djinn, the ships its only masters; it could pause in its thundering activity if someone died, as a giant might hesitate at the squeak of something under his foot, but not for long. Within him a cool voice remarked that a simile was a mischancy nag to ride—ride him easy.... He saw Ben lean down, returning that pencil to the desk, and Ben was evidently doing battle with some private unease. ”

“ The light of the fires showed Ben her moving lips, her dark eyes that now and then sought for him, too. Goodman Cory had halted short of the window, crucified by uncertainty, the flintlock a stiff burden. "Ben," he said—"Ben, hear me...."
The crash of an axe against the oaken door blotted out at last the clamor of a man strangling in his own blood. But Ben could still hear his mother praying.
"A stone axe, not steel," said Joseph Cory, and nodded to Ben as one man to another. "No good against our oak." ”

“ Living at John Kenny's house with no duty but teaching, Mr. Hibbs had all the time in the world for the boys but not an undivided spirit. The black stare was further softened by his wig, a mousy thing carelessly powdered. The powder grayed his poor clothes, puffing off in a sneezy cloud if anyone patted his back—no one ever did except John Kenny.
"And yet," said Mr. Kenny, "if I understand you, sir, you believe in God. Shall God rule by chance? I am not well grounded in philosophy." ”