The Hearth and Eagle (18 page)

“In the taproom or the parlor, I believe—making some sort of a to-do.” He compressed his mouth, and frowned again through his spectacles.

“Descended from an ancient line...” Ah, Hesper was too young to know the subtle comfort of that, but she might have listened. He turned the page to the last stanza, reading to himself.

For me secure from Fortune’s blows,
Secure of what I can not lose
In my small pinnace I can sail
Contemning all the blustering roar;
And running with a merry gale
With friendly stars my safety seek,
Within some little winding creek
And see the storm from shore.

That was the way to take life, in contemplation and serenity.

“Eat your dinner, Pa. Do—” said Hesper coaxingly seeing that she had hurt him. She nudged his full plate. “I’d love to hear the poem tomorrow.”

Susan came bustling into the kitchen. “So you’re back, miss—” she said scowling at Hesper in a preoccupied way, her broad freckled face was flushed from the exertion of cleaning the always immaculate parlor and moving furniture out of the way of tonight’s celebration. “My God, Roger, you’re that gormy at your vittles, I’m like to go mad. Have you not enough reading shut up in your room all day ? Step to the buttery—” she added under her breath to Hesper.

She thrust a cheesecloth into the girl’s hands and took one herself and they both wrung water from the waiting pats of butter, while Hesper gave a whispered account of her morning, deleting, of course the fortune-telling episode.

“So Peg-Leg’s out, we must trust to Johnnie alone—” Susan said, shaking her head, “I daren’t trust anyone else. The baker’s boy told me there was a big nigger hunt in Lynn last night. The slave catcher might come here, next.”

Hesper squeezed the butter until it jutted in ridges between her fingers. “Ma, I can row. I could help Johnnie.”

“Rubbish. You’ll do nothing of the sort. No, hold your tongue, I’ve got enough to fret me without your buffleheaded notions.”

Hesper turned her back on her mother; hot mutinous tears flew to her eyes. No uncertainties about Ma, anyway. She always said No.

The knocker on the side door between the taproom and the kitchen resounded with two heavy raps. Susan’s hand paused, she put the butter in its crock. “Who’s that, I wonder?” she said slowly. “Not a regular customer, or he’d’ve walked in.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Well, there’s naught yet for anyone to find—” she gave her grim chuckle and pushed past her daughter. Hesper dabbed at her eyes with the buttery cheesecloth and followed.

She heard a deep voice say, “Mrs. Honeywood? May I speak with you a moment?” and knew from the enunciation it was no Marbleheader. Her mother answered, “In the kitchen then, sir. We’re expecting some of the men
off
the ships tonight, and the parlor’s at sixes and sevens.”

A very tall and heavy-set man entered the room after Susan. He was dressed in frock coat and striped silk waistcoat; across it a massive gold link watch chain ran from pocket to pocket. He held a glossy beaver top hat in his hand, and there was a big dent in the top of the hat. His hair, clipped short and square above his ears, was of so light a flaxen color that it almost seemed white, and made him appear older than his twenty-six years.

Roger looked up in surprise, and rose from the table as the stranger entered saying, “Good day, sir. I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Amos Porterman. I now own the old Allen shoe manufactory on School Street.”

“Oh, do you indeed, sir?” answered Roger with vague hospitality, and not the slightest interest. “Will you sit down?” He glanced for help to his wife, a trifle surprised at her silence and a wariness in her bearing.

Hesper and Susan were both more enlightened than Roger by the stranger’s identification of himself. Hesper thought, with immediate antagonism, Oh, it’s that dreadful shoeman from Danvers, Johnnie’s father was talking about. What nasty cold blue eyes he has, and what’s he want butting in here? Surely Ma’d give him short shrift.

But Susan, though she sat down when Mr. Porterman did, said nothing. She sat waiting. This then was the foreigner who’d bought up the Allen factory last fall, when Mr. Allen and all the other shoemen in town, except Bassett, went bankrupt in the panic. This big young man looked honest and open enough, but you never knew. The shoe manufactories had a large trade with the South, and many of them were copperheads.

Amos Porterman was irritated but not surprised by his reception. He’d met nothing but varying shades of hostility all the months he’d been coming to Marblehead. “I came today, ma’am—” he turned back to Susan, “because I’ve been told you keep a very fine inn.”

“Well—” said Susan. She continued to regard him steadily. He had very bushy blond eyebrows, and when he drew them together as he did now they gave to his blue eyes a quizzical expression, mitigating the frown. “Well, ma’am, now I’ve bought a factory here, I must spend some time in Marblehead to look out for it. I’m not comfortable at the Hotel, and I thought I’d take a room with you.”

Hesper made an involuntary gesture and said “Oh, no,” under her breath. Amos heard it and was annoyed. He gave her a quick glance. Unmannerly redheaded chit, gawky and untidy. Surely that was a dab of butter on her cheek? And what right had those greenish eyes to stare at him from under those peculiar dark eyebrows with such a frank dislike.

“I’ve no rooms just now, Mr. Porterman—” said Susan after a pause. “I seldom let ’em out, anyhow, except to drummers for a night. I’ve all I can do with the taproom.”

“You mean—” snapped Amos, all at once losing his temper, “that you don’t want me here! You confounded Marbleheaders ... my factory’s giving work to your folk who need it, I don’t see why you...” He clenched his big hand, and shut his mouth with a snap, thinking of his walk here down Washington Street. A gang of small boys had thrown rocks at him from ambush behind the Town House, yelling “Rock him outa town! Squael the dor-rty furriner!”

To Hesper and Roger’s amazement no less than Amos’, Susan suddenly laughed. “Maybe we be a mite hard on furriners, and maybe some of us like the old ways best when we didn’t have to depend on shoes for work, the sea did it all. But times change and I don’t know as I blame you for being grouty.”

Why, Ma likes him, thought Hesper dumbfounded. Ma always liked a bit of spunk and temper in a man, but a
shoeman
—from Danvers, bad as Salem and so big and sleek and fancy-clothed. Why he actually smelled of bay rum, she thought, sniffing, instead of fish and rum, as a man should.

“Well, ma’am, I’ll be going,” said Amos, only slightly mollified by Susan’s speech. “Sorry to trouble you folks.” He bent his big body in a stiff bow.

“You want a place to board—” said Susan, who had made up her mind that this man had come here with no sinister intent, “you might try Mrs. Leah Cubby, on State Street. She takes roomers.”

“Oh, really.” Amos turned from the door, grateful for any softening. The manufactory did well, but aside from his foreman he had no one to talk to in Marblehead. These people with their peculiar words, and rough burring dialect kept so tightly to themselves on their rocky promontory, you’d have thought them living in a fortress. Opposition always roused his dander, and he’d have moved here altogether, forced them to accept him, if it weren’t for Lily Rose.

“Cubby’s an odd name,” he said at random, conversationally.

At this Mr. Honeywood raised his head from the book he was reading and spoke in the tone of a tolerant schoolmaster. “It’s derived from Cubier, a Guernsey name. We have many such here, though not quite as old as the English stock, like mine.” He bent his head again.

“Oh,” said Amos. Queer Dick, this Honeywood, with his ink-stained fingers and long, thin, baldish head. Pride of family, evidently. Well you met that in Danvers too, and damn silly it was.

“You’re married, a’nt you, Mr. Porterman?” said Susan glancing at his wide gold wedding band. She had been thinking that Leah was a mighty handsome woman.

“Yes, I am. But my wife is an invalid. She stays at our home in Danvers.” Lily Rose, and her lacy pink negligees, and her medicine bottles and her strained, sweet smiles. Must remember to buy her a present before I go home.

“Well, will you try the Widow Cubby’s?” asked Susan sharply, and Hesper was relieved to hear her mother’s normal impatience returned. This stranger was interrupting everything, holding up the preparations for tonight, standing there like a hulk, not sense enough to go. Let him go to Leah’s, or back to the Hotel, or sleep on the wharves, so long as he got out of here. A bore he was, and patronizing too. She hadn’t missed the disdainful look he cast around the kitchen when he came in.

And in this she was quite right. After Amos had bowed himself out he walked along Front toward State Street to interview the Widow Cubby, and he thought with pity and contempt of the Honeywoods. Older than the Ark, that house, wouldn’t you think they’d make shift somehow to get some new furniture, and at least cover the rough plank flooring with some decent oilcloth? Shiftless, run to seed, except perhaps the mother. She had a briskness and toughness about her that appealed to him. That Honeywood, no gumption, well educated obviously and done nothing about it. Amos thought of his own career. Father came to Danvers about 1818, from where? New York, New Jersey? Amos didn’t remember, had never been interested. Married a Scotch hired girl, set up a tannery, did well. Died worth ten thousand. And I’m going to do a sight better than that. I know shoes from the hides up, and I know manufacturing. When I die I’ll leave a hundred thousand—more. Leave it to whom? He sighed. If Lily Rose would only get stronger. Maybe the sea air would help if he could only persuade her to move here. Could a tart, sensible woman like Mrs. Honeywood make Lily Rose pull herself together? He thought again of the antiquated Inn, smelling of sea air and smoke, of the dominating rough-voiced wife, and the vague bookworm of a husband, wondering if all Marbleheaders were as strange. Of Hesper he did not think at all.

B
Y SIX O’CLOCK,
the guests, having finished their supper, began to arrive at the Hearth and Eagle for the evening’s frolic. The fishermen off the
Ceres
and the
Diana
were spruced up in their best doublebreasted red flannel shirts, knitted “Gansey” jackets, and flowing black silk ties, and their oiled rubber boots were discarded tonight for shiny black brogans made in their own little cordwainer shops. Those men who had wives brought them, of course, for this was a social gathering, and Susan had extended invitations through little Benjie, the grocer’s boy.

Hesper, upstairs in her bedroom, heard the frequent tinkle of the bell that hung over the taproom door, and tried to hurry.

Her best dress was a dark blue poplin, made over from one of her mother’s. It was trimmed, on the skirt and sleeves, with rows of Turkeyred rickrack, bought cheap by Susan from a peddler. Hesper, never much aware of clothes, had been satisfied with the dress. Now she wasn’t so sure. It didn’t seem to fit just right, tight across the bust and bunchy on one shoulder. She loathed sewing, always impatient to get outdoors or back to the book she was reading, but now she wished that she had paid more attention to the pattern her mother had cut for her. Charity Trevercombe was coming tonight, and she always wore lovely dresses.

Her last anxious look into the mirror ended in dissatisfaction as usual. She had tried her hair in three different ways, determined that no matter what Ma said, she would not wear it in a long pigtail like a little girl. The flamboyant masses of fiery tendrils refused to conform. They wouldn’t sleek down over her ears from a center parting and they wouldn’t make a neat knot on the nape of her neck. She finally coiled the heavy braid around her head, skewering it with slippery bone hairpins, and the result made her scalp ache. She put on her only jewel, a mourning brooch, onyx and silver, inherited from Gran, and went nervously downstairs.

Her father met her in the hall. Roger, too, had taken unusual pains with his appearance, and his antique and seedy frock coat was redeemed by a snowy stock, and old-fashioned gold-button waistcoat. Although in general he never mingled with the Inn’s customers, this was different. This farewell to the crews was part of tradition. He had no intention of staying long amongst the company, nor much interest in any of them, but he wandered from group to group greeting them with misty benevolence, and pleased to see his house in gala mood. The oldest house in Marblehead, and certainly the finest, he thought complacently, now that it’s erstwhile rivals, “King Hooper’s” house and the Lee Mansion, had deteriorated from their last-century glories and been converted to commercial purposes, a drygoods store and a bank.

Susan had thrown open all of the “New” wing tonight, he was delighted to see. He wandered through the great hall with its fluted and white-painted paneling, illumined by candles in gilded sconces. He gazed with deep pleasure at the elaborate carved stairway, its newel post like a thick white icicle. It led up to the four large bedrooms that were never used except by the infrequent overnight guests.

Susan had even opened the small second parlor across the hall from the main entrance, though it was but inadequately furnished, and she kept it as a box room.

Roger returned from his prowl of inspection, and drifted up to the two sea captains, Caswell from the
Ceres
and Lane of the
Diana,
who stood chatting together near the punch bowl in the taproom.

“Good evening, sirs, good evening,” Roger said heartily. “You’re most welcome, and your men too. Have you sampled the punch? Susan took pains with it, I know.” The refreshments were on the house tonight, so Susan had closed the bar and provided a five-gallon tub filled with rum punch.

The two Bank skippers, who had each been boasting of the merits of his own schooner, the smartness of his particular crew, and the unprecedented number of quintals of cod they were sure to catch, broke off and turned politely to their host.

“Why sure, Rahger-r—” said Cap’n Lane, who had sat on the same bench with him forty-five years ago in the little Orne Street schoolhouse, “punch is a stavin’ foine dr-rink, war-rms a mon’s belly, an’ per-rks his sperrits.”