Captain James Duke, at fifty, was complicated, dark-haired, and somewhat handsome. He took a hardheaded and hardhanded stance to disguise an inner recognition of worthlessness. Quixotic, he swung from morbid self-pity to rigid authority over his crews and himself. The future flickered before him as a likely series of disappointments.
On the annual occasion of an all-day drunk (his ill-starred birthday), he dragged out the piteous litany of his life: he had been pitched onto a British ship as a midshipman in his tenth year “as an unwanted pup-dog is tied to a sapling in the woods and left to be torn apart by wild beasts.” Even his appointment had come about only because his paternal grandfather, old Nicolaus Duke, of the venerable Boston lumber company Duke & Sons, wrote to the more ancient Dred-Peacock and begged the favor of a recommendation. The favor granted, Nicolaus Duke and the antique English peer died within weeks of each other and could be depended on no more. James Duke lasted, repeatedly passed over for promotion in favor of candidates from influential landed families or members of the peerage. But the Napoleonic Wars had lofted him swiftly over a lieutenancy to post captain. And there he stayed until, in 1808, his fifty-first year, a letter arrived from his Boston cousin Freegrace Duke, asking if he would consider taking a director’s seat on the board of Duke & Sons, to fill the vacancy left by the death of James’s father, Sedley.
That his father had died was a shock to James. He had heard no news from him or of him for many years. He assumed that if Sedley had left him anything in his will it would be an insultingly paltry sum, a single shilling, or a savage castigation for causing the death of his first wife, James’s mother; he had always known why his father hated him.
As the days passed he considered the idea of sitting on the board of the family timber company. If he accepted, he would have to make concessions, would have to revert to being an American. He could imagine the meetings, a scarred oaken table with half a dozen backwoodsmen slouched around it on pine benches, tankards of rum-laced home-brewed beer in hand.
Before he could draft his cool note of refusal, a letter arrived from a Boston law office signed by the attorney Hugh Trumbull. It was late December, the days short and dark, the worst of the English year. Advocate Trumbull begged James’s attendance as soon as he might manage the journey in order to hear something to his advantage; enclosed was a draft for a hundred pounds, drawn on Duke & Sons, for his passage to Boston.
The Western Blessing was crowded with Germans journeying to Pennsylvania to found a utopia, and these people quarrelled incessantly about the details of the earthly Paradise to come. To keep free of them, James Duke stayed in his cabin during the day, coming out only to take the wintry air or to dine and drink with Captain Euclid Gunn, who was even older than him but of an equal rank. Over a roast chicken, they raked through sea acquaintances held in common. They spoke of retired and disabled friends as the level sank in the decanter. “Captain Richard Moore, one of the most ablest seamen I ever knew, is forced to open a herring stall in Bristol. You are a fortunate man, Captain Duke, to be connected to a wealthy family. I myself have no expectations of a rich sinecure but hope I will go to Davy Jones afore I wheel a barrow of mussels.”
“Shocked to hear that Dick Moore has come to such a pass. But, Captain Gunn, I am sure that a happier future awaits you than clam mongering. Do you not have a reputation for fashioning small attractive tables?”
“It is only my amusement, you know. Never to make a living from it.”
“You might try. Everyone admires small tables—as that one,” he said, and he pointed to an example of the captain’s handiwork, an ebon side table inlaid with a ship in full sail cut from walrus-tusk ivory. “Any mariner’s family would be happy to possess such a handsome article of furnishing.”
“You must have it when you disembark! I will make another, but you shall take this one as a memento of your years at sea and this voyage. I insist. Look, it has a secret drawer where you may keep your love letters, heh.”
Other choice guests joined the captain’s table, and once a female, Mistress Posey Brandon, a lady of considerable stature, quite overtopping the gentlemen at the table, but sitting silent for the most part unless pressed to speak. She was travelling home after a long visit with a relative, to rejoin her husband, Winthrop Brandon, a Presbyterian preacher who had made his name with a book of virtuous precepts. Another passenger, Thomas Gort, showed her excessive attention. James understood why Gort fawned; she had great onyx-dark eyes fringed by thick lashes. But Gort made too much of her. When Mrs. Brandon mentioned that she had visited Madame Tussaud’s exhibition, at the Lyceum Theatre, of wax curiosities of crime Gort begged for repulsive details. The lady demurred, saying she had averted her eyes before many of the exhibits.
“I do not see how a member of the gentler sex, even a German or a French lady, could have fastened on such an unpleasant mode of expression,” she said and cut at her meat. “I understand she first gained her skill by making wax flowers for family funeral wreaths.” After that she said nothing more.
The days of tilting horizon passed slowly. As they neared the continent they saw dozens of ships, wooden leviathans rope-strung like musical instruments, shimmering with raw salt. Boston Harbor was so jammed they anchored a twenty-minute row from the docks.
James located his trunk, a scuffed brown affair, on the deck. He did not see the promised inlaid table and found Captain Gunn on the bridge.
“I thought I would thank you again for the table,” he said.
It seemed to him that Captain Gunn showed a coolness. “Ah,” he remarked.
“Sir, I look forward to enjoying it in my new quarters.”
“Ah.”
“Shall I fetch it on deck myself?”
“Ha! You, Woodrow!” he bellowed at a sailor. “Fetch the small table in my cabin to the deck for this gentleman.” There was undoubtedly a sneer embedded in the word “gentleman.” James Duke guessed that Captain Gunn was in his true self a parsimonious man made momentarily generous by Madeira.
He was crowded into the tender with two dozen passengers. A portly matron stood up to receive a small trunk. The weight surprised her and she swayed, tried to hold it, then fell with a shriek into the wintry harbor. She clutched at the gunwale, and her weight dislodged two more passengers. Captain Duke stretched out his hand to a terrified man and in slow but inexorable motion the tender rose on its side and sent him and ten or twelve more people bellowing and clawing over the side. Gasping (for he could not swim), James Duke thrashed his arms, trying for the gunwale. His hand touched it, though he could barely feel it, then he went under again as the heavy woman wrapped an arm around him. He escaped his captor and with an atavistic swimming motion burst upward into the sweet air. Something clenched his hair and dragged him to the side of the tender, something got hold of the back of his coat collar and hauled relentlessly. He came up over the gunwale, crashed into the bottom of the boat, and looked up at his savior—a woman wearing a black bonnet and staring at him with lustrous, intensely black eyes—Mistress Brandon, who had exhibited the strength of two men.
It was exceedingly cold in Boston; snow fell until all was muffled and silent, roofs, carriages, and still the snow came. Two days after his arrival, and with a drumbeat headache, James Duke walked from the inn where he was staying to the offices of Trumbull & Tendrill, slipping on icy cobblestones.
The advocate might have been English, James thought, taking in the fashionable double-breasted coat with notable lapels. Hugh Trumbull made James comfortable in a chair near the snapping fire. “Now, sir,” he said, “to business,” and over the next hour laid out the details of Sedley Duke’s will.
Elated and confused, James Duke returned to the inn with a weight of keys in his pocket. In essence, Sedley Duke had regretted his long animosity and left half of his rich estate to James, including his dwelling house north of Tremont Street, complete with six acres of garden land, a fruit orchard, twenty acres of fresh meadow, a twelve-stall stable, two carriages and six matched pair of horses, nearly two million acres of forest in Maine, a collection of Indian relics, a stuffed crocodile, eight silver platters, four and twenty pewter plates, a turtle-shell-hafted knife, a library of eighty-four books, two hogsheads of Portuguese vinho, eight barrels of rum, two waistcoats embroidered with bucolic scenes, five Turkish carpets, six warehouses of lumber, twenty-seven acres of salt marsh, part interests in several ships, potash manufactories, a shingle factory, Ohio timberlands, bank accounts and stocks. And more that he could not remember.
He directed the hired coachman to his father’s—now his—house. They rolled up a curved drive to a house of rosy brick with a black lacquer door set off by pedimented windows. He counted eight smoking chimneys. A gray-haired woman wearing a gray linsey-woolsey dress opened the door, and her eyes widened as she took him in. She curtsied and said, in a welcome English voice, that she was Mrs. Tubjoy, “Mr. Sedley’s housekeeper, sir. And now in your service. We all welcome you.”
As he stepped into the entrance hall he was dashed into his childhood as though seated on a swing that someone had suddenly given a great shove. He knew every inch of this place. There was the complex mahogany staircase rising into the dim upper hall, there a gleaming carpet rod, and there—there—the terrible hall stand, ten feet high, intensely authoritarian. This piece of furniture, with its blotched looking glass, its hat hooks and cloak holders, was the ceremonial guard of the house. Every day Sedley had come home and placed his umbrella in the crooked holder, hung his tall black hat on a hook, his greatcoat on another, and, divested of his city exterior, passed into the world of “home.” He’d gone into his library and drunk whiskey until the housemaid rang the bell for dinner. Young James and Sedley had sat at opposite ends of the sixteen-foot table with never a word spoken. James shook the memory loose. He had forgotten this life. Two men brought his trunk and Captain Gunn’s small table into the hall.
“Perhaps you will wish to take your late father’s room, Mr. James?” Mrs. Tubjoy asked, opening a heavy mahogany door on the second floor. The room was large, the windows gave a view of great-trunked oaks. The monstrous bed was mahogany with a fringed green canopy, the posts carved into dolphins and mermaids. He detected a faded scent of cigar smoke, wool, leather polish, and horsiness. He shook his head.
On the third floor they entered a room he liked immediately. In front of the fireplace stood two companionable wing chairs upholstered in faded red brocade.
“Mrs. Tubjoy, could the boy bring my small table in the entryway up at once?”
“Of course. I’ll see to it,” she said.
Alone, he examined the room. The furnishings were of rosewood rather than mahogany. The windows looked out above the oaks toward a shining strip of sea that was invisible from his father’s room. Above the washstand hung a large and slightly clouded mirror and he saw himself in it, the dimmed image of a man who appeared resolute, strong, with no sign that he was unworthy.
A visit to the stables was a heady experience. He had his choice of a barouche or a sporty gig. The coachman, Will Thing, came in, stuffing his arms into his livery jacket. He was garrulous and obsequious, sprinkling “yes, sir”s around as though casting handfuls of seed on new-raked soil. Out on the high road he pointed out landmarks and distinguished manses, the establishments of leading merchants and men of account. He passed by the grand house belonging to Freegrace Duke and his wife, Lenore, and then by that of another cousin, Edward Duke and his wife, Lydia.
The Winthrop Brandons lived in a small cottage in Williams Court near two taverns and a devotional bookshop. As James walked up the tramped-earth path to the door, in his hands his present of a silver dish (wrapped in a length of muslin) to thank Mistress Brandon for having saved his life, he heard unlikely sounds inside the house: meaty thumps and a shrill cry.
“Kind Jesus, he is beating her!” He stopped on the bottom step and hesitated: should he leave and come another time, or knock on the door and perhaps engage with an enraged husband in the flower of fury? Was it not his responsibility to save the woman who had saved him? It was, and he knocked briskly. There was a hoarse shriek. He knocked again. The house went silent. After long minutes, just as he was turning away, the door opened and Mistress Brandon stood on the sill, somewhat breathless and with heaving bosom.
“Mr. Duke! What a pleasure. Come in, do come in, please.”
He looked at her but could see no signs of ill use beyond her rapid breathing and a disarranged black curl in front of one ear. The pupils of her beautiful eyes were dilated. He followed her into a dishevelled sitting room, where open books covered an octagonal table. There was a sideboard choked with pewter, five doors, and a row of sunny windows.
“Mr. Duke, will you not take tea?”
“I would very much like to do so,” he said, resting his gift on a pine chair with a broken rung.
“I will just be a moment. We keep no servant, so I prepare everything myself.” She strode out of the room and he sat looking about him. The bookcase, behind its glass-fronted doors, carried the collected expository discourses of many scribbling preachers. He looked at several of the open books heaped on the octagonal table. All were sermons, and a half-filled sheet of foolscap, pen, and ink indicated that the master of the house, the Reverend Brandon, was cribbing up filler for his own sermon. There was a slithering sound. He turned. A door was ajar and through the gap he saw the raw, wet face of a man of about forty, his fair hair matted and sweaty, who muttered something between bleeding lips, then, at the jangle of the approaching tea tray, darted away.
“Here we are!” cried Mistress Brandon merrily, coming into the room. She looked about, but there was no place to put the tray.
“Just hold this a moment, will you?” she said, thrusting the tray at him. He held it, his mind whirring with curiosity. She swept the books off the octagonal table with a strong arm, sending them crashing to the floor. She took the tray from his astonished hands.
“There. Don’t mind all the old books—just Mr. Brandon’s work. He has a perfectly good study but prefers to spraddle his books on the tea table. He says the light is better, but I think he does it to annoy. He was struck by lightning two summers ago and has been somewhat difficult since that day.” The great dark eyes gazed on him so intently that he began to stammer and blurt.
“I have known men—mariners, others—struck by, by lightning bolts myself, others, you understand, and when it does not kill them, hurt them, outright, it disorders their minds—often—to a marked degree. Some recover, some never.”
“I fear that is the case with Mr. Brandon. I live in expectation that he will do himself a mortal injury, so disordered are his mental faculties. He has great trouble preaching. He wanders about the streets at night.” She held out a plate of walnut cakes and he took one. She said, in an aggrieved tone, “These walnuts I gathered with my father last season. I picked out hundreds of nut meats and stored them for winter use. If Mr. Brandon made a better living we might have money to employ a gardener and kitchen help who would gather the nuts. It is very trying to scrimp along. I was not brought up to live in this manner. I was quite spoiled on my visit to my mother’s aunt in England. Her husband is a cloth merchant and everything in their country house is of the best quality. They have a city house as well, in London. A veritable treasure.” Again the dark gaze.
“Mr.—Parson—Minister—Brandon was unable? To accompany you?”
“Quite unable. He has a little flock of parishioners and feels the responsibility. Also, his behavior is somewhat unpredictable and I thought it better not to bring him into polite society. A neighbor woman looked after him while I was away.”
He took the bull by the horns. “While you were preparing tea I thought I saw—Mr. Brandon, I assumed. He peed—no, peeped in that door,” James said and he pointed in an agony of embarrassment. “He looked somewhat—out of order?” In fact, he thought Mr. Brandon had looked swinishly drunk.
“I have no doubt,” she said. “He is always out of order. It is best to take no notice of his high jinks when he is in his fits.”
There seemed nothing to say to this. She cast her eyes down. A long silence fell. He studied her face, trying to combat the power of the black eyes by finding fault with her nose—too long—and her mouth, thin and wide.
Unable to think of more conversation—after the disclosure of the damaged husband it was too late to introduce the topic of weather—James Duke, suddenly glib, began to rattle off the details of his good fortune.
“You see,” he said, “I was sent away from home by my father at a young age to become a maritime officer, and over the years we never corresponded. My mother died at my birth and my father always blamed me for it. Still, I have survived.”
Mistress Brandon, turning her attention wholly on him, said, “But what a fortunate outcome! We all dream that a rich relative will shower us with gold and manses, but you are the first one I have ever known who has experienced such a turnover. What will you now do—live happily ever after? Is your wife ecstatic?”
“I will participate in the affairs of the family company, Duke & Sons, in what capacity I am not yet secure. And, as to the other, I have no wife. I have ever been single.”
“Indeed!” cried Mistress Brandon. “Did you say Duke & Sons? The great timber company?” Her eyes were forest pools.
“Yes. It is the family business and I am joining it. But the truth is that I am somewhat nervous as I know very little about the timber trade.”
“My dear Mr. Duke! Perhaps I may be of help to you. I am the daughter of Phineas Breeley, of the Breeley Lumber Contractors, in New Brunswick. He has had many dealings in Maine. As a girl I assisted my father in his paperwork. All that I know I shall impart to you. And then we must find you a wife.”
The following evening James dined with the Trumbulls and met his Duke cousins. Cousin Freegrace Duke was plump and short, breathing with asthmatic stertor. Freegrace’s brother, Edward, was a large, heavy man. Neither resembled the backwoodsmen of James’s imagination. Freegrace’s wife, Lenore, was a pale beauty with smoky eyes and a flaxen chignon, who would attract attention in any gathering. James was astonished. How had such a fat little man got such a beautiful wife? Edward’s wife, Lydia, was more of a common type, with brown braids wound around her head, and a habit of clearing her throat just before she spoke. After dinner, the ladies retired and the talk turned to lumber, but James found himself thinking only of wives.
James visited the Brandons again the next week.
Mrs. Brandon let him in. Mr. Brandon was nowhere in sight—“closeted with another fit,” Mistress Brandon said. She smiled, she looked at his lips when he spoke, questioned him about his cousins and the Duke business, asked his advice on the choice between a deep-blue shawl and one of rose cashmere, and then, from the corner cupboard, she pulled out a sheaf of closely inscribed pages, held together by a dressmaker’s pin, detailing the structure and proceedings of her father’s timber-contracting business—his work as a timber looker, the cheapest kinds of lumber camps, where to find the best men (Penobscot men, found in Bangor). James thought he had never met so intelligent and fine a woman and told her so. To himself he said that not only were her eyes beautiful but she had the grace of a swan, the voice of a dove. Batting those beautiful eyes and blushing from cleavage to hairline, she begged him to call on her again the next week, when he had digested all the workings of her timber-business scrawls.
Weeks passed and James often called on Mrs. Brandon. They had become great friends. It was foolish to pretend he was calling on both husband and wife. Mr. Brandon was always in his fits and James had never actually seen him save for the glimpse of wild eyes on his first visit.
One afternoon he came into the now familiar parlor and found Mrs. Brandon sitting at the table with a stack of bills and accounts. Her face showed traces of tears, and wiping them away and throwing down her pen she rushed into the kitchen to make the tea. He glanced over the accounts; ye gods, what was she living on? And was it right that such an intelligent and handsome woman had to scratch up the tea herself in some back kitchen? Although he had never been in any of the other rooms of the house, he set out for the kitchen.
She was stuffing kindling into the stove. The kitchen smelled of bad drains and the disagreeable odor of the wet soapstone sink, old ashes, and a sour dishclout. She turned, frowning horribly when she heard his footstep, but the frown transformed into a tear-wet dimpled smile.
“Ah! I thought—”
He knew what she thought; she thought it was Mr. Brandon blundering in on her, twitching and spewing, pissing in his filthy pants.
“My dear,” he said and took her hand. “You shall not endure this another day. I shall hire a woman to come in and do for you at once. Let us now forget the tea, go into the parlor, and have a little talk about what must be done,” for he intended to pay up those nagging past-due accounts, intended to have Mr. Brandon put in an asylum, intended much more. He had money and he would put it to use. He could get what he wanted and he wanted Posey Brandon.
“Come in, sir,” Mrs. Deere, the new cook, who also served as housemaid, said, opening the door. The parlor table gleamed with a waxy lustre and there was a jar of pussy willows on the windowsill. He could smell something pleasant in the distant kitchen, something Mrs. Deere said was “a rhubarb roly-poly, first rhubarb of the year.” And, as was now his right, he went to that delicious room where Mrs. Deere had performed miracles. The new stove glowed, the soapstone sink no longer reeked.
“Very good, Mrs. Deere. Have you had any trouble with—with Mr. Brandon?”
“No, sir. I make him bread and butter and hot milk, which Dr. Hudson says is good for deranged people. Missus Brandon takes it to him and brings back the dishes.” She came closer and whispered, “But I have to lock away the leftover joint as he strives for meat.”
“I hope we will have a solution to the problem before long. I met with Dr. Hudson myself this morning. Would you be so good as to bring tea into the parlor while I discuss the doctor’s findings with Mistress Brandon?”
“My dear,” he said to Posey Brandon, waving his hand over his saucer of steaming pudding. “I spoke with Dr. Hudson this morning for some time. He thinks it possible that Mr. Brandon may someday come to his senses. He thinks fresh air would be very good for him, and a place to walk and exercise. To that end he suggests that you send Mr. Brandon to the care of a farm family. He has a farmer in mind, a Jeremiah Taunton, who lives about five miles out of town, a man of calm ways. His wife is a generous woman, very pleasant and quiet. They would be glad of the extra money. Does that not sound a good solution?”
“Oh, yes, yes. You are very good to me and I am grateful.” She looked at him with her great dark eyes.
The next day he called again to say that the doctor himself would take Mr. Brandon to the farm on the coming Monday. In his breast pocket James heard the doctor’s bill crackle a little. A small price to get rid of the wretched Brandon.
Spring came at last in early June, a rushing spate of warm days, the gutters streaming with meltwater, people smiling and walking about as though their legs were new-made.
“I am extremely sorry to be late,” James Duke said to Posey Brandon. “I was delayed by Dr. Hudson, who called on me only moments before I left. To be brief, he says that Mr. Brandon has become ill from some other source than his derangement. He coughs continuously and cannot keep any food down. He is very thin and weak. He is in bed in his farm room and cannot rise from it. Dr. Hudson has ordered two fresh eggs a day beaten into warm milk with a spoonful of rum and says he may recover with the warm days but he may not. We can only wait.”
They sat silent and pensive, both thinking of Mr. Brandon. They sat drinking tea and saying very little until the twilight deepened.
“I must go, I fear,” James Duke said, rising. “I wish—” But what he wished was not spoken.
“Of course I would like to see Mr. Brandon if there comes any . . . crisis,” she murmured.
“Dr. Hudson said he would come straight to you if, if, if the illness took a grave turn.” As he spoke, the doctor’s gig turned in to the street and drew up before the house.
“Oh, heavens,” Mrs. Brandon said. James stood waiting, exultation seizing him.
The doctor’s face was expressionless, noncommittal.
“Dr. Hudson, do take tea with us,” Mrs. Brandon said. “I will just see to it,” and she strode briskly out of the room.
James Duke looked at him. “Is there a change?” he asked in a low voice.
“There is a change,” the doctor answered and said nothing more, waiting for Mrs. Brandon to return. The lady returned, skirts swishing with the violence of her stride.
“Please tell us, Doctor, how Mr. Brandon does.” Her voice was calm and steady.
“I am happy to say that he has rallied, rallied enough to eat heartily and drink like a camel. His derangement seems rather more settled as well. I think he must have passed some sort of crisis. He recognized me, inquired after your health, praised the farmer and his wife. He still objects to milk and bread but in a week or so we may try him with breast of chicken. I feel he might be able to come home soon,” he said.
Mrs. Brandon remained silent for a long, long beat. The fresh tea tray and a dish of seedcake arrived; Posey Brandon poured with a steady hand. “Sugar? Yes, lemon?” She passed a cup to the doctor.
“We will wait and see if he continues to improve. I allowed that tonight he may sleep on the farmhouse porch for the benefits of fresh air. In a week if he has grown stronger I think he will be little trouble. I can always send the nurse with him if there is any doubt. It’s rather an interesting case and it would be far easier for me to follow his progress if he were here instead of out in the country. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Duke?”
“Of course,” James Duke said in a grudging voice. “Who could disagree?”
When the clock struck the half-hour the men rose, made their goodbyes, and went out together.
In the gloaming it was difficult for James to see the doctor’s expression when he asked him if he might call on Mr. Brandon.
“Perhaps, in a day or two, you might, but I fear that the appearance of a stranger alone could startle him into a relapse. I equally do not yet approve a visit from Mrs. Brandon. It is one of his crotchets that he has developed a fear of her and claims—ridiculous as it sounds—that she somehow harms him. But that will likely pass as he recovers his reason. He trusts me. Shall we go out to the farm together in the morning?”
“If I find I have no other appointments, that would be agreeable,” James Duke said. But later, when the moon rose, he went to the stable, saddled his horse, and took the high road out of the city toward the farm where Mr. Brandon lay dreaming of rib roast.
The quiet morning broke into noisy pieces when Farmer Taunton’s youngest son, William, a grimy boy with a common face, pounded into town bareback on a black plow horse. He went panting to the house of his married sister, Charlotte, and she roused her husband, Saul Fleet, who ran to the magistrate Jonas Gildart’s house and blurted out the tale, his voice leaping a high whinny and sinking back with the gravity of the news. “Charlotte’s brother! He come in from the old place, brought word the old man been found dead. Layin’ on the porch floor. Strangled or choked looks like. Said his neck all crooked, color a rhubarb stalk.” The magistrate set his full coffee cup down. He pushed it away, sloshing the table, and began to ask questions.
Saul answered eagerly: No, he didn’t think the old man was given to falling down. No, his mother-in-law slept in the house. Had done so for many years, after a dispute over Mr. Taunton’s snoring, which shook the house timbers. Mr. Taunton slept on the porch in good weather and on the kitchen daybed in winter. He, Saul Fleet, had no idea why anyone would harm Mr. Taunton, a hardworking, inoffensive man who did some blacksmithing on the side, was a regular churchgoer, and neither drank nor smoked. His turnips were much prized.
The magistrate sent for William.
“Well, boy, I have a few questions. You are William Taunton, the son of Jeremiah Taunton, is that not correct? Good, good. Now, did your father allow any vagrants or strangers to sleep in the barn last night?”
“No, sir, he never lets them sleep in the barn. Unless they pay. In New England money.”
“And were there any of these paying strangers present last night?”
“Only Mr. Brandon, sir.”
“And who is Mr. Brandon?”
“He is a preacher, sir, but is funny in the head from lightnin’. Mother cared for him and Mr. Duke paid Father. He stayed with us since two months or more. Father give him the good front room.”
“Who is Mr. Duke?”
“I don’t know, sir, but Father said he was a rich man. He drives a gig with two grays. Very good horses. I thought I heard them horses last night but it was a patridge in the woods.”
“And was Mr. Brandon in the house last night?”
“Yessir. Dr. Hudson said he was some better and could go home soon. He felt very well yesterday and wanted to sleep on the back porch for the fresh air.”
“And did Mr. Brandon sleep on the back porch last night?”
“No, sir, he did not. Father’s bed is there and he said he would not be turned out of it for any man.”
“Did Mr. Brandon like your father?”
“Most times. But then he said he was sick and tired of bread and milk, which was what we fed him. Pa said, ‘Eat it or go hungry.’ And Mr. Brandon squinched up his eyes very fierce.”
“And where is Mr. Brandon now?”
“He is helpin’ Mother and Tom lay Father out. He’s mighty heavy, is Pa.”
The magistrate exchanged significant glances with two men who had come in with Dr. Hudson and dismissed the boy.
“In your opinion, Doctor, is it possible that this preacher nourished a hatred of Mr. Taunton on account of the bread and milk or whatever reason, and gripped by a mad fit in the night crept in and strangled him?”
“He was given to fears, that is true, but I never heard him say anything against Mr. Taunton. Except the bread and milk, which was being fed him on my orders. Of course he may have been overcome with jealousy over the porch bed.”
“Could he not, in his disturbed mind, have laid the blame for the repetitive comestibles on Mr. Taunton? And the sequestering of the porch bed?”
“Ye-e-es,” the doctor said reluctantly. “But I do not think he is strong enough to strangle a man.”
“But it has been known, has it not, for insane persons to exhibit great strength in their fits?”
“It has been known, certainly. There are many mysteries associated with insanity.”
“So you knew him to be insane?”
“I knew him to have been deranged by a lightning bolt. But I was quite sure he was mending well and soon would be as sane as you or I.”
“ ‘Soon would be’ is not the same as ‘was.’ I put it to you that it was he who strangled Mr. Taunton. Gentlemen, I ask you to go out and return with Mr. Brandon, who must be examined and stand trial.”
Mr. Brandon was incarcerated and relapsed into a fulminating babble of his innocence. His loyal flock stood in vigil outside the gaol singing hymns, and later outside the court when, after a speedy trial, he was found guilty and a date was set for his hanging.
All through a hot damp Boston summer James Duke courted Posey Breeley Brandon. He knew that no one could ever grasp what she meant to him. He had been sent away as a boy, passed over for promotion; he had been poor and crushed. And then how everything had changed. The crown of joy was Posey. He knew also that his cousins would be scandalized by the age difference between them, for Posey was twenty years younger. She was his constant visitor. In the evenings, when a cooling sea breeze moved inshore, they walked in the rose garden, around and around the sundial, talking of lumber and true love’s knot, her silk skirt rustling, her great dark eyes cast low. He would do anything for her, had already done so without regret. She asked him for nothing except his company and his conversation. She paid rapt attention to everything he said, he who all his life had been ignored. But the getting of Posey was hard. Brandon was the nephew of Judge Archibald Brandon, who moved silently among the highest circles of power. The judge would not see his unfortunate relative, a man who he believed had been the innocent victim of an evil marriage and a lightning bolt, hanged as a murderer.
“I almost understand why God laid this affliction on him,” the judge said to Dr. Hudson. “The city has become a stinking mire of corruption and evildoing. I see this as a sign of God’s punishing vengeance. And yet I cannot feel my nephew was guilty of strangling this farmer over disagreeable suppers. He was ever a gentle man.”
“There may be a way for him to avoid that—that end,” the doctor said. “I think we must appeal to the authorities at the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds, in Williamsburg.” A stay of execution was granted and a room at the Virginia retreat secured. In the company of others with disordered minds Mr. Brandon shone out as a model inmate.
When, finally, months later, news came of his death, from pneumonia, James waited a decent interval—twenty-four hours—before proposing. Posey accepted on the spot and he embraced her and tried to seal the betrothal with a tender kiss. How surprised he was by the fierce and spitty ardor with which she returned his dry osculation. Later, much later, he was to think back on it and interpret it as a warning, a warning he did not—could not—heed.
James Duke’s wedding day began with a shock like a snapped fiddle string. His future father-in-law arrived in midmorning astride a limping, rolling-gaited woods horse of indifferent color. And who had ever seen such a physiognomy as that possessed by Phineas Breeley? His head looked as though it had been lopped off with a broadax just above the eyebrows and then squeezed back together, leaving a great horizontal scar. Below the scar sat two anthracite-black eyes, a much-broken nose (a sure sign of backwoods coarseness), and a lipless mouth opening. His left ear was missing; only a hairy hole remained. The man let himself carefully down to the ground and advanced on Posey. He gripped her in a mighty hug, plastered her face with kisses that sounded like popping corn, and turned to James.
“Well,” he said. “Here I be. Ready for the shivaree and our Grand Trip.” Posey had invited her father to accompany them on their honeymoon to New York. “I know you’ll love my papa,” she had said, “and he’s always wanted to see that New York. It will be company for us in a place we don’t know no one.” She had wanted James to invite Freegrace and Edward Duke and their wives to the ceremony and the celebratory dinner, but he found excuses—Edward was travelling, Freegrace’s wife was abed with pleurisy. In truth, he had not told them of his impending marriage. Not yet, not yet, he temporized.
Unsure how to greet the fellow, James looked covertly at the horse’s hooves, which showed founder rings. No wonder the wretched beast limped.
“Let us turn out your horse in the pasture,” he said. “I see he is sore-footed. He may have a holiday while we tour New York.”
“Sore foot or not, all the same to me,” Phineas Breeley said. “They are all jades and nags. I have No Love for Horses.”
I can see that, James thought, somewhat put off by the fellow’s odd emphases.
The ceremony was brief, and afterward father and daughter chattered animatedly on the long coach trip while James, across from them but huddled into the corner, tried to doze. The father’s arm encircled Posey and occasionally he peppered her with his clicking kisses. The day waned and twilight darkened the coach interior and they talked on of people born and dead, accidents, departures from the scene, violent weather, amusing happenings, the faults of the men who worked for Breeley. All night they talked, a great telling of names and antics. The coach stopped for a change of horses just after dawn and Breeley, who seemed still quite lively, obligingly ran into the hostelry and came back with a pan of weak coffee and six cold boiled eggs. He swallowed half the contents of the coffee pan and four of the eggs, tossing the shells out the window. Refreshed by this repast he addressed James.
“I guess you and me will have many a good old Woods Talk. I always knowed I’d hook up to a Big Outfit, and a course Duke Sons is one of the Biggest. Got some of the Best Pineries in Maine. We can sure enough make Some Pile a Boards, eh?” And he gave a frightful wink. James was horrified. If Edward and Freegrace ever discovered that this scarred New Brunswicker imagined himself one with them they would perish from shock.
It was nearly two when they arrived at their inn, the Four Elms, a handsome Georgian building.
James was relieved that Phineas Breeley’s room was some distance down the hall from the suite he had reserved, for Breeley had followed them upstairs, trailing the men carrying the trunks. He had inspected their room as though he were going to occupy it with them. Finally, oh, finally, James thought, he went to his own room, calling out that they must meet in an hour’s time under the elms and begin their exploration of New York.
“At last I have you to myself,” he murmured to Posey, embracing her lightly.
“Yes! Isn’t Father grand company? He has a thousand stories.”
James reconciled himself to a week in the man’s company. In their long perambulation down the busy streets of New York, ankle-deep in horse manure, they dodged scores of pigs, passed a platform said to be the site of the slave market, hurried past the stench of cattle pens and slaughterhouses, the vacant lots piled high with animal manure. James prayed it would not rain, would spare them the ordeal of wading through liquid shit. There was a constant moil of people harnessing horses, loading and unloading carts. Horses crowded the streets—omnibus horses, butcher horses, bakery-cart horses, milk-delivery horses, express horses—and, lying alongside the curbs, dead and dying horses. These inhumane sights did not crush their appetites. They dined on roast bear (very like pork) and mashed turnips at the famous Red Cow Tavern. The waiter said they had a rare treat—pineapples had just arrived from the Bahamas, would they not wish to try one? They would. Swarms of flies hung like living chandeliers over the tables, but the attentive waiters stood nearby, waving fly whisks, and they managed.
The pineapple, pared and sliced and served on pale-blue dishes, was prime, ripe, and fragrant. They fought the flies for the treat, but it was almost impossible to avoid the nasty sensation of a frantic buzzing insect in the mouth. When the pineapple was gone and the bill paid they started back to the Four Elms. On the way they passed several rowdy taverns where singing and the thumping of drums and female shrieks signalled some kind of coarse entertainment. At the door of their hotel Phineas Breeley stopped. “Reckon I’ll just Walk About for ’nother hour—that Pineapple made me restless. See you on the Morrow.” He saluted and turned down a side street.
The wedding night was an extreme experience for James Duke. He knew what was expected of him and even looked forward to it, but in no way was he prepared for the flying tigress who leaped on him, tore open the falls of his trousers, and seized his penis, in no way was he prepared for her biting and scratching, thrusting and wriggling, tearing at his and her own clothes, nor for the wrestling and panting. All night long Posey kept him going. Just before dawn he fell into a near-delirious sleep, his body shockingly embroidered with the experiences of the previous hours.
With daylight he woke and slid gingerly out of bed. Posey lay a-sprawl, breathing stertorously. James, wincing, washed, dressed, and went down to the small parlor, where coffee, tea, and hot chocolate sat on a sideboard. He helped himself to a plate of still-warm biscuits dabbed with butter and strawberry jam, took his cup and plate to a table near the window, and gazed out at the waving elm branches.
“There You Are!” Phineas Breeley cried, entering the quiet room, striding to the coffeepot and pouring himself an overfull cup. He sat opposite James, looked at him searchingly. He saw the welts, the black-and-blue bite marks, the scratches on the backs of his hands, his swollen lips and earlobes.
“Give you Quite a Ride, didn’t she? She’s Pretty Feisty, ain’t she? I taught her Everything she knows and she turned out Good. She’s a chip off the Old Stump. Guess you can take it better than Old Preacher Man Brandon.” He winked and leered.
James felt the blood in his veins turn to mud. What in the name of God did Phineas Breeley mean? That he had tutored his daughter in the sexual arts? Cold horror flooded his mind at the thought. That a father would—! James felt his gorge rising, although he knew that such things happened, mostly to backwoods people deprived of diverse company. He could say nothing, and was relieved when Breeley launched into a monologue detailing the sights he had seen after he parted from them the evening before, the plump blond “patridge” he had found and “Give a Good Fuck,” the drinks he had swallowed. At last James got up and excused himself, saying he would bring Posey a cup of morning coffee.
“Oh, yas, I know about the mornin’ ‘Cup a Coffee.’ ” Breeley smirked, licking his lips and winking.
James Duke would have been happy to forgo sex for the next thirty years, but he was trapped. Indeed, Posey interpreted the morning cup of coffee much as her father had and pulled at James’s waistcoat, trying to get him back on the bed. He looked at her. He was repulsed by the thought that the old scar-faced troll had had her, and turned away. She seized his wrist with her hard grip and yanked. He fell onto the bed and she swarmed over him like ants on honeycomb. He tried, but could not keep down the image of the scar-laced head of Phineas Breeley pressed between his daughter’s legs.
“No!” he shouted and leaped from the bed. Posey came after him, arms swinging, gorilla teeth bared. She beat him to blancmange consistency and left him in the corner.
“You had better come to some sense,” she said, gritting those strong white teeth. “I won’t have another milksop husband.”
“And I will not have a violent wife,” James said, summoning his quarterdeck persona. “We must talk all of this out.” He believed in reason, though it was unreasonable to do so.
James and Posey Duke walked out alone, leaving Phineas Breeley behind at James’s impassioned request. “We must talk alone, we must.” After three and a half hours of questions, halting answers, temper fits, tears, scorn, and expressions of sad disappointment, they came to a compromise: Posey would have her own suite of rooms; she and James would agree beforehand on the times when he would visit the matrimonial bed; he would not ask questions if she invited another (unspecified); she would not use violence to get her way; they would try to live happily ever after even though it might take great effort; one week after their return to Boston, Phineas Breeley must find his own quarters to dwell in or return to New Brunswick. On this last point James was diamond hard, and pledged a sum toward the purchase of a Breeley house. He said, in an almost threatening voice, that the alternative was divorce. But he did not ask the question of Posey’s childhood relations with old Breeley. And she did not ask the question about his late-night visit to the Taunton farm. ♦
