Lord of the Isles Read online

  To my niece Ann Barr Chidsey

  LORD OF THE ISLES

  Ann Buttoner awoke with a start, every nerve tingling. She didn't know how long she had been asleep; but she did know, immediately and unmistakably, though she could not have said why, that there was a man in her room.

  She lay still. She could not even pray, she was so frightened.

  She had not been alone in the house—Mother slept across the hall as usual—but she had been alone in this room she was accustomed to share with her sisters. Helen and Grace were to Middletown, visiting with Mother's sister, Aunt Hawkins; and Orlando the slavey had gone along with them for protection.

  The wind moaned. Leaves, falling, clicked against the window-panes, and one of them unexpectedly found the way open for it and tumbled in, turning 'round and 'round until, startled, it came to rest on the floor.

  Now Ann began to hear voices of men, back by the pear orchard, or beyond that, in the direction of the river.

  She slithered out of bed. She might have screamed, so that Mother would come. But she didn't want to scream; and indeed she wasn't sure that she could, just then.

  Her lingers found her shawl. It was knitted, but it only covered shoulders and breast. All she had on otherwise was her nightrail, not even any sleeping drawers. She shivered. It was real cold, especially around her legs.

  In the dark, walking sideways, she found the door, examined the latch. It was thrown. Nobody had entered by that way.

  She heard the voices again, men's voices. She wondered that Mother did not hear them. They were some distance away,

  calling to one another; but she reckoned that they were getting closer.

  She went to the window, not directly but rather she circled half around the room to get there, trying to move in silence, striving to keep her bare feet from shushing on the bare floor.

  Another cloud of leaves broke from one of the maples and clip-clicked inquisitively against the windows.

  She heard the men again, nearer now. They sounded as if they were hunting something, though she heard no hounds. But they sounded like hunters. Yet this was right in the town, right on Prospect Street; though down toward the river, where the voices were, it was mostly just pasture and pear orchard.

  "Please don't scream," said a voice at her feet.

  She squinched her eyes shut, stretching herself straight and tight, all but going up on her toes. After a spell she let her breath go out a mite and very cautiously opened her eyes.

  "Thank you," said the voice. "You done that first-rate."

  It was a roopy voice, slow, with juice in it. It was not taut, twangy, hke you might have expected.

  Ann could not see him, except as a blur of shadow, fuzzy-edged, just below the window, a place he was crouching in order to be out of sight from the yard.

  She looked out. Though there was no moon, there was God's plenty of stars. Another leaf chickered against the window, tried to find the opening, failed, tried again, got in, and spiraled to the floor, where it rested beside the first, both of them looking like wild ducks about to take to the air again at the slightest sound.

  A man came out of the orchard, not running but walking mighty fast with long strides, and bent low as he walked. He'd a musket in his hand, and it was nigh onto as long as he was tall. He stopped, looked around, looked up, saw Ann.

  "Miss Buttoner, there! You!"

  Ann did not stir.

  "Don't answer," said the voice at her feet.

  "You seen anybody pass this way, if you please?"

  "Don't say anything," said the voice at her feet.

  She didn't say anything. She probably could not have said anything if she'd tried, anyway; though she reckoned later, when she'd had a chance to mull it over, that she might at least have waggled her arms or something; but anyway she didn't; she stood perfectly still.

  The man down there nodded. He was one of the river men. He trotted toward Prospect Street, and soon another man came out of the orchard and trotted after him, and then another. They all had guns.

  A certain amount of mist had crept up from the river. It trailed each man out of the orchard, twisting and twining around his ankles, pitifully eager to detain him; and now, now that the men had gone, it coiled in sullen ribbons, baffled.

  Ann held the shawl tight. Under the nightrail her skin was stippled with goose-pimples.

  She guessed she could jump into bed, but that mightn't do any good. She was sure she could not make the door in time.

  The shadow at her feet writhed, and rose, becoming real. She could not see his face. He was a tall man, and must have been mighty spry, strong, too, to have chmbed up the wooden rainspout and into the window. He stood very close to her, sort of bending over her.

  "Thank you," he said again, saying it gravely but at the same time with a hint of a chuckle in the voice, like tiny waves clucking around a pihng. "I can leave you now."

  "What—was—it?"

  "Just a disagreement, down to the ferry tavern."

  She shivered again, and not just from the cold. The ferry tavern was the most ungodly place in Hartford.

  "Hide high and they'll not find you, way I figure it. Ever notice how landsmen always look down when they're searching for something? I'm a seafaring man myself, and I reckon maybe I'd better get back where I belong. There's a whaler down to

  Saybrook that sails tor the Sandwich Islands tomorrow. They'll be needing hands enough to cover me. I hate whaling — but maybe the other side of the world, especially the Sandwich Islands, is the right place for me now, eh?"

  He leaned forward and kissed her right smacketty-dab on the mouth. He smelled of rum.

  That righted her. She took her hands from the shawl, all regardless, and she slapped his face just as hard as she could, first on one side, then on the other.

  She would have started to weep then, feeling better, feeling alive; but the man gave her no chance. Laughing in the darkness, but laughing low and fondly, he reached out. A hand took her shoulder, and she was spun around. Another hand, a large heavy one, thwacked her buttocks. It stung, burning aU through her. It set her to staggering.

  "One good slap deserves another, eh? Good night—and sweet dreams!"

  She whirled, sobbing, choking, tears hot in her eyes, so graveled that she forgot all about the shawl, which fell off; and she flew at him, arms flailing.

  But he'd already got a hand on the windowsill, and he vaulted over it before she could get there. She heard him land. A moment later he was running, bending low, heading for the trees. He paused an instant, turning, to wave; and then his figure was swallowed by the shadows of the maples, crispy leaves stirring to mark the place where he had been.

  So at last she was free to weep, yet she didn't weep, only stared after him. That was the way she was when Mother knocked.

  It was not necessary to evade anything with Mother, who simply assumed that Ann'd heard something but seen nothing. They were at the window together when a man came back from Prospect Street, cutting diagonally across the yard toward the pear orchard. He was stumpy and had a hippy walk, and a

  hanger slammed foolishly against his knee. Mother called to him.

  "Missus Buttoner, ma'am? Miss Buttoner?"

  "Who were they chasing?"

  "One of them Lamb boys. The one that run away to sea two-three years ago. Johnny. Come back today, and sure as snakes he got in trouble right off. He leaver fight as work, that lad."

  "But what did he do?"

  The stumpy searcher had started off, the hanger whanging back and forth. He called an answer over his shoulder.

  "Only killed a man, that's all."

  Will You Marry Me?

  It scraped her. It was well that nobody asked her a
direct question about that night—not Mother, nor, when they got back, Helen or Grace, nor yet Orlando—for Ann Buttoner was an honest party and wouldn't have lied. All the same, it scraped her. Johnny the Lamb, as they called him, the most irresponsible member of the town's most irresponsible family, had not been caught. The man he'd killed had been buried, and the fugitive had been indicted by the grand jury on a charge of murder. There were some that said Johnny Lamb had done the only thing a man could do, defending himself against an attacker armed with a knife. Others were not sure. The spectators aren't ever in agreement over an affair like that, which happened fast and amid much excitement, most of them being tolerably well rummed up at the time, too. Anyway, Johnny was wanted by the law. If he had really acted in self-defense, and could prove it, then why did he run away? Or, having run away, which in itself was understandable maybe, why, after thinking it over, didn't he come back and give himself up?

  Ann Buttoner did not argue these points, even with herself. She was concerned overwhelmingly with whether she ought to tell anybody what had happened that night. Aside from the disgrace, it could be that she was also an accessory after the fact, or something like that, though of course it was the disgrace she thought of mostly, and the effect it would have on her sisters and on Mother.

  Even though nobody asked her, should she speak up? Never mind the State law, which she didn't know much about anyway; but was she breaking a moral law by keeping her mouth shut? Had she ought to at least speak to Reverend Mr. Willets about it?

  She was almost glad when the time came, a scant week after the event itself, for her to tell. This was when Jabez Mathewson asked her to marry him.

  There he stood, as sad as a turtle, a thin long young man with an abnormally small neck, protuberant eyes, damp hands. He was not attractive, but he was good, and kind: all the Mathew-sons were kind folks.

  The proposal was by no means unexpected; but two things about it irked Ann.

  One: Throughout the carefully prepared and no doubt often rehearsed declaration just finished he had called her "Miss Buttoner." They had been childhood friends, neighbors. Until now they'd always been Jabez and Ann. Just because he was suggesting matrimony and a trip to the Sandwich Islands, that still didn't mean that he had to get so persnicketty all of a sudden, did it? For no reason that she tried to find, Ann resented that "Miss Buttoner." It was that college he'd been going to, she reckoned.

  Two: She did not know whether he had proposed to Alice Voorhees first.

  When Jabez Mathewson had come back from New Haven the previous day with the announcement that he was determined to sail with the first United States church mission to a foreign land, everybody in town knew right off that within a matter of hours he would be asking either Alice Voorhees or Ann Buttoner to be his wife. Normally he would have waited until he finished his studies at Yale. But a wife he must have if he was going to be a member of the mission, scheduled to sail from Boston in a week's time. For various reasons, all good, the newly formed mission board had made it a rule that only married couples should be sent forth to spread the Word.

  There were others Jabez Mathewson might ask, if he still had time, in the event that both Ann Buttoner and Alice Voorhees turned him down; but what interested Alice and Ann, not to mention all the rest of Hartford, was: Which of these two would he ask first?

  And now here was Ann, not knowing. Jabez had made his declaration sooner than she'd expected. She was flustered.

  What disturbed her even more, however, was the realization that unless she refused him point-blank—which she wasn't prepared to do, certainly not until she had found out about Alice anyway—that is, before she let this thing go any further, it was necessary to tell Jabez about what had happened that night last week upstairs. It was only fair. It would hurt him; but it had to be done.

  "I—I—"

  She turned away, head low.

  "There is something you must know about me first," she muttered; and with eyes downcast, hands clasped before her, she walked to the window.

  She looked out on the side yard, the maples, the pear orchard. This was directly underneath her bedroom.

  Standing there, blinking to keep the tears back, in a low voice she told him about that man in her room.

  When she had finished, there was a great deal of silence.

  The leaves kept falling, turning, turning. Once the leaves start to go, they go fast.

  After a while, motionless, she said, "Well?"

  "It was a most unfortunate incident. My, uh, my heart goes out to you, Miss Buttoner." Clearly he was confused. "But— you haven't answered my question?"

  She understood, then. Angry for an instant, a fleet flare, she felt warm and good and understanding immediately afterward. She turned to him, all but spreading her arms.

  Sure, he only wanted a wife now because he wanted so much to go to Hawaii. It was not glory he sought: there'd be little enough of that among naked savages. It wasn't worldly goods: he was the son of the richest merchant in Hartford.

  No, the point was that he had grown up. He was a man. No longer was he the diffident tike who had sported with Grace and Helen and her, whom they'd more than once pelted with pine cones and teased because he was afraid to bellywhopper down Sentinel Hill. He had not ceased his theological studies on impulse. He wasn't jeopardizing his chances of a pulpit, simply on a whim. He was utterly in earnest. His eyes shone. He was a man, a dedicated man. That was why he had addressed her as "Miss Buttoner."

  She shook her head as she walked toward him. At least, she believed afterward that she had. She'd meant to.

  He did not grab her arms or lean to kiss her. Instead he threw back his head, exhaling loudly as though in thankfulness.

  "Let us pray—Miss Buttoner," he whispered.

  They knelt, facing each other, close, their foreheads touching. Ann loved him then. She could understand how any woman might be willing to go with him and help him on the great and holy errand he was about to perform. Not that she herself intended to do this! She hadn't yet made up her mind. But it was good to be with him, and to feel his clean spiritual strength.

  She inhaled tremblingly, and her clasped hands touched his.

  Somebody started to come in from the kitchen, but promptly and hushedly backed away. It was Grace, Ann knew from the step.

  At last he said "Amen," and Ann hastily said, "Amen," and they rose, he helping her solicitously but not acting in a possessive manner.

  Eyes downcast, she walked with him to the door.

  "I'll give you your answer before supper—Mr. Mathewson," she whispered.

  When the door had closed. Mother came into the room, followed by both Grace and Helen. Mrs. Buttoner was a widow of only six months, unaccustomed to authority: her husband had always handled all discipline in this household, and handled it very well indeed.

  "Ann, Jabez Mathewson has proposed to you!"

  "Only marriage, Mother. Don't you think he has the right to?"

  "Do you know what that would mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Ann, I absolutely forbid you to marry him!"

  She couldn't possibly have said anything more stupid.

  "Im afraid it's too late, Mother. I have already accepted."

  "I tell you, I forbid it!"

  Chin high, Ann walked past them. She went up to her room and started to pack her chest.

  It was an afternoon and night none of them cared afterward to look back at. There were tears and recriminations; there was hysteria. They hated one another as they shrieked at one another, their faces contorted with rage; and then they hated themselves for having hated one another. In time they all became quiet, except for stifled sobs, and indeed some of them even snatched a little sleep. But the step had been taken. Through everything, even when she herself was screeching, Ann Buttoner had gone right on packing her chest, and long before suppertime she had sent Mr. Mathewson, by Orlando, a letter promising to become his wife the next day.

  For the Sake of the Record r />
  There would be a thin high dry long whimpering squeal, as of a soul being tormented in Hell; then a similar squeal, and another and another, until they rose in an ear-spUtting chorus, shrill and frantic. Then they'd cease, these sounds, as though at a command from forward—a command in the form of a "thuitkl" so loud that all the world shivered and shuddered, while water you couldn't see hissed past the battened port, and the deck and ceiling twisted out of line with one another, and the bulwarks leaned out of line with both, and the lamp that hung by a chain spun now this way, again that, flinging specks of light here and there, swirling them, or causing them to jerk and jump.

  There'd be a split-second of silence, an excruciating instant when everything except those jiggering flecks of light was still. And then the brig would lurch into another green arching hollow, and there would be a thin high dry long whimpering squeal, as of a soul being tormented in Hell, and then a similar squeal, and another and another ... as it had been for days, as it would be for days and weeks on end, for months.

  Mrs. Jabez Mathewson was reading aloud from her journal.

  ". . . and so with faith and trust in the goodness and wisdom of the Reverend Mr. Bingham, our leader, who comes from Vermont, and with an even more exalted and fervent trust in that Higher Personage, Our Creator, Who in His Almighty Mercy will not remove His Hand of Protection from us, we are tossed from day to turbulent day 'mid such discomfort as few if any of us ever knew at home could be."

  It was poor stuff. Even though she'd revised the first rough draft twice, it still stumbled. She was no author. She was but doing her duty, if doggedly; for they all, but especially the females, had had it impressed upon them that, as a member of the first foreign mission from the United States, each, howsoever humble personally, was an integral part of history and should not fail to keep a journal or diary, in order that posterity might know in what manner it was that they had toiled in the Lord's vineyard.

  All of which would be very well if only you had something you dared to write about, or could really describe. Life aboard the Tkaddeus was so different from anything Ann ever had known or dreamed of, that she found herself unable to put it down in words that would not sting and scald. But no complaints! Miserable as they were, they must not whine on paper! They had been reminded that the letters they wrote home, as well as the diaries and journals they kept, would probably be pubhshed, if not now then later, and would in any event certainly be read from a large number of pulpits. From those who read or listened, it was pointed out, must come the recruits who could carry on the Lord's work in the Pacific islands when those of the present group—the Family, as they already called themselves—had fallen by the wayside or been called back to the bosom of the Father. From those members of far audiences, too, must come the money wherewith the good work could be pushed forward. So—no complaints! Yet you must write.