But even in fever common sense told me I could not show Emmia my golden horn and tell the story. She would never understand why I hadn’t killed the mue. She would be demoralized by the mere thought of a mue existing near the city. Like most women she could scarcely bear the sound of the word “mue” — she’d sooner have had a rat run up her leg.
Then for a while I think the fever sent my wits wandering out of the world.
While I wrote this morning the fog dissolved. Nickie called me on deck an hour ago — her face was wet — and pointed to the blur of green two or three miles southeast. As I was watching, a white bird circled down to the island. No smoke rises from it; the day is a quiet of blue and gold.
I’ll make only this note of it for the present. We have a light westerly, and Captain Barr intends to circumnavigate, tacking as near the island as he safely can. We shall watch for harbors, stream outlets, reefs, beaches, any sign of habitation. Major note: Miranda Nicoletta is happy.
I was pulled awake by feeling another blanket being spread over me. Wool-soft it was and sweet with the girlscent of Emmia — I mean her own, not the boughten perfume she sometimes used. She must have brought it from her own bed, and I a damned yard-boy not brave enough to kill a mue but low enough to steal from him.
Emmia was talking, of what I don’t know; in the middle of the pleasant sound I spoke her name. She said: “Hush, Davy! How you do run on! Be the good jo and let me put on this poultice — don’t squirm so!” Her voice was as kind as her hands that eased down the blankets and pressed a minty-smeiling pad where my skin still hurt, some. The pain was no longer serious; I was pretending to be worse off than I was, to prolong her soft attentions. “What was you yattering about just now, Davy? Where the sun rises, you said, only it’s night, you know it is, so maybe you was fevery the way I heard about a man had the smallpox and he thought he was tumbling off a hoss, so whoa he says, whoa, and falls out of bed for real and dead as anything the next day, the chill you know, come to think, that was Morton Sampson that married a connection of Ma’s and used to live on Cayuga Street catacorny from the old schoolhouse…” I wondered if I could have spoken in my fever about the golden horn. She was coaxing my arms under the blanket. “Yes, you went running on, about traveling, merciful winds, I guess you must like to talk, I couldn’t scarcely get a word in by the thin edge — oh, feel that sweat! Your fever’s busted, Davy, and that’s what they call a good sweat, you be all right now, only keep warm, boy, and you better get to sleep too.”
I said: “If a man went far—”
“Ayah, that’s just the way you was running on, only now you should get to sleep because like Ma says if a person don’t get enough sleep the next day is ruint, see?” Resting a hand on the blanket, she was watching me not quite so directly. Her conversational brook went on, but I think already we had some of the special awkwardness a man and woman feel when each knows the other is thinking of the intercourse not yet shared. “I do marvel — where the sun rises, think of having such fancies when you be fevered, still it must be nice to travel, I always wished I could, like that friend of Pa’s, I can’t think of his name, anyway he went all the way to Humber Town — oh, who was it? — Peckham — I’ll think of it in a minute, it wasn’t Peckham no-way — why, Hamlet Parsons was who it was, remember? — Ham Parsons of course with the one gone eye account of an ax handle in the one I mean, all the way to Huinber Town and come to think, that was just two summers ago because it was the same year we lost old White-Stocking from the bloat — what a nice old thing he was…”
It was restful, sleepy-making, like a brook, like a tree murmuring the wind, only bless her, Emmia wasn’t built like a tree and her bark wasn’t scratchy, not anywhere. In my half-sick drowsiness I wondered why I should feel afraid of Emmia when she was being so kind to me, bringing that blanket, sitting now so close that my right arm was cramped because it didn’t dare sprawl across her lap. I suppose I knew myself to be two or more people, that common trouble. The Davy who wanted to be a gentle, loving (and safely blameless) friend — that’s the only one who was afraid. The healthy jo who needed to grab her and lock her loins till he could spend himself was not afraid of Emmia but only, in a practical way, of the world: he didn’t want to be slammed into the pillory. What never occurred to me until years later was that all these inconsistent and troubling selves are real as soon as your mind has gone through the pain of giving them birth.
7
“Be you warm enough now?” I made some kind of noise. “You know, Davy, them fancies you get in a fever a’n’t real dreams like, I mean not like the ones that tell your fortune if you go to sleep with a corncob under the pillow. You sure you be warm enough?”
“I wish you was always with me.”
“What?”
“Wish you was with me. In my bed.”
She didn’t slap my face. I couldn’t look at hers, but of a sudden she was lying on the pallet warm and close, her breath fluttering my hair. The blankets bunched thick between us. She was on my right arm so it couldn’t slip around her. She held my left hand away. I had at least three times her strength and couldn’t dream of using any of it. “Davy dear, mustn’t — I mean we better not, only—” I kissed her to stop the talk. “You’re being bad now, Davy.” I kissed her ear and the silken hollow of her shoulder. I hadn’t known it, but that was blowing on a fire. Her thigh slid over me and she was trembling, pushing against me through the blankets and presently whimpering: “It’s a sin — Mother of Abraham, don’t let me be so bad!” She thrust herself free and rolled away. I thought she would get up and leave me, but instead she lay on the bare floor rumpled and careless, her knees drawn up, her skirt fallen, hands pressed at her face.
For just that moment, her eyes not watching me, her secret place uncovered wanton and helpless for me, I was all man responding and could have taken her, never mind whether she was crying. Then my mind went idiot and yelped: If Mam Robson comes looking for her, or Old Jon? I heard her fainting voice. “Why’n’t you do it to me?”
I flung the blankets away. The final cold killing thought arrived, not in words but a picture: a wooden frame on a tall column; holes in the frame for the offending bondservant’s neck, wrists and ankles; a clear space on the earth so that rocks and garbage could be readily cleared away after the thing in the pillory had become a mere lesson in morality too motionless to be entertaining.
Emmia’s suffering face was turned to me. She knew I had been ready for her and now was not. She embraced me clumsily, trying to restore me with shaking ineffectual fingers. Maybe that was when she too remembered the law, for she suddenly dragged the blankets over me and stumbled away. I thought: It’s all up with me — can I run?
But she was returning. Her wet face was not angry. She sat by me again, not too near, her smock tucked in at her knees. She groped for a handkerchief, found none, mopped her face on the blanket. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Miss Emmia.”
She stared dumbfounded, then laughed breathlessly. “Oh you poor sweet cloth-head! It’s my fault, and now I suppose you think I’m one of these girls’ll do it for anybody, not a mor’l to their name, honest I’m not like that, Davy, and when it’s just you and me and us such good friends you don’t have to call me Miss Emmia heavensake! Aw Davy, things sort of go to my head, I can’t explain, you wouldn’t know—”