For a moment, we stood there side by side at the rail, looking down at the black water in silence. Then I said, “Where I’m from, Sarah… actually, everywhere, a man is accountable to a woman and her family. But that… that seems not to be the case here.”
“No, it certainly isn’t. Seduced and abandoned. Is that how you describe it? I’m a young woman seduced by a cad and abandoned, Owen Brown. A fact soon to be visible to all.” She gave one of her small, bitter laughs. “But nothing’s that simple, of course. It never is. After all, I loved the man,” she said. Then she confessed that she still loved him. She confessed that she had been willingly seduced. He was in no way a cad, and he didn’t exactly abandon her. And in his own way, he was as trapped as she. Not by his body, of course, as she was, but by his circumstances. He couldn’t marry her. Not even if he wanted to. He was married to someone else. Married to a fine, loving woman, in fact, whom she very much admired, and he had three beautiful children by her. And he had been as foolish and reckless and cruel to that woman and their children as she.
“But you’re the one who has to pay the price.”
“Yes, I must pay the price. At least publicly. There’s your ‘shame,’ Owen. My shame. Although it must also be my child’s. But he pays another way. In secret. He knows everything that I know, naturally, but he can never say it, can never stand forth in public and accept responsibility for his sins. He can never be publically accountable, not without shaming his dear, innocent wife and children, which would only compound his sin. No, he will have to live with his guilt instead,” Sarah said. And because it was a secret guilt, it would be compounded for the rest of his life. His sin was like the pearl of great price purchased with borrowed money, which he would never be able to pay back. Sarah’s shame and her child’s reflected shame might actually fade in time — her sin was public, or soon would be, but sometimes people forget and eventually forgive. “Especially if we aren’t around to remind them with our physical presence,” she said. “But his guilt will grow and grow. No one can ever forgive him, not even he himself, and he can never forget me. For as long as he lives, whether I live or die, I’ll remain the emblem of his sin. I know him well, Owen Brown. He’s a brilliantly sensitive man, and he makes all the finest moral distinctions. He’s practically famous for it.” She suddenly laughed.
“Is he a pastor?” I asked. I could not imagine any ordinary man capable of seducing this woman. He would have to have been a man of powerful intellect, a man possessed of a great gift of language, and certainly someone highly respected in her society.
“Is he a pastor? A minister?” She smiled evenly. “That’s sweet. He might have been, I suppose. Born too late for that, though. But never mind who or what he is, Owen. Don’t ask any further. I shan’t tell, and it doesn’t matter anyhow.”
“I’m sorry;’ I said. “I didn’t mean to pry. But I think you’re way too kind to him. If I were your father or your brother, let me tell you, I’d deal with the fellow in a proper way. I’d make him ashamed, all right. A man like that.”
“Owen, no. You don’t understand. No one knows who he is, except me. No one. And the man himself. Oh, he knows! But I’ve told no one: not my family, not my aunt, no one. I’ve simply refused, and I never will reveal his name. Never. It’s the only power I have over him.” She laughed, then was serious again. “And remember, I love him, Owen. You must try to understand, I don’t want to bring him down. He’s a public man, and I don’t want to ruin his life or scandalize his marriage or taint the lives of his innocent children. I’ve done enough damage as it is. And luckily, except for what I’ve brought upon my poor mother and father and my dear aunts, most of the damage I’ve done only to myself. And to my poor unborn child,” she added, with immense sadness in her voice.
I said I supposed she was right. But I didn’t understand.
She gazed into my face and abruptly laughed. “Really, sometimes I do wish I were a man. Look at you! You’re in as much despair over your life as I, yet the most important question you have to deal with is how to be a man of action and a man of religion. How to be more like your beloved father. You feel like neither — you’re not a man of action and not a man of religion — and so you pine away, like a poor seduced and abandoned girl.”
“You make me feel foolish.”
But so much of a man’s life is merely a matter of choice, she declared — the right choice, the wrong choice. And even if a man makes the wrong choice, he can still change it. He simply has to change his mind. “You’re a man, Owen, aren’t you? And, really, when you have good health, you men are your minds. You can become a man of action, if you want. Or of religion. Or both. You may not end up famous for it, like your beloved father, but you can be it. Tell me, Owen, isn’t that how it is?” She stared grimly down at the black waves and clenched the rail with both hands.
“Well, no,” I said. “Or at least it never has seemed as easy as that. Not to me. But perhaps I should go in now” I said to her, for she seemed not to be listening anymore. I believed that I had been dismissed. “I must bid you good night,” I said.
She looked straight out at the darkness and did not respond. “Miss Peabody, I’m going in now. I hope… I hope that we can resume our conversation tomorrow.”
“Yes,” she said in a thin voice. “That would be nice.”
“Good night, then, Miss Peabody.”
“Yes, good night, Mister Brown.”
I drew myself away and returned the long way around the bow towards the stairs that led belowdecks to our cabin, where Father lay snoring in sleep. She was right, I knew. My troubles were as nothing compared to hers. And much as I wanted to believe that my life, my fate, was sealed and that I was trapped as fully by my character as she was by her pregnant female body, in fact, my fate was not sealed, and I wasn’t trapped. For I was, indeed, my mind. As were most men. And I could change it. I could simply change my mind, as she said.
I could believe the lie that I had told Father and become, like him, a man of religion. Perhaps belief could be willed into existence, just as unbelief could. It would not be entirely a lie anyhow, if, like Father, I was obliged to struggle against unbelief and sometimes, perhaps slightly more often than he, failed. Had he not, especially as a young man, now and then failed to sustain his faith in God?
And I could become a man of action as well. In the war against slavery, I had a wonderful cause, a wide field of worthy endeavor; and in Father I had a fearless and energetic model.
The wind had picked up slightly, and the ship had begun to slip and chop some, and the sails were snapping and the lines crackling overhead. My nausea was edging back. I grabbed up my empty chamber pot where I had left it and quickly descended to our cabin, and I went at once to my bunk and lay down to ponder these new and important matters.
I remember lying in my bunk the next morning, happily re-visiting the scene of the night before and making plans to see Sarah again that day, so that we could pursue the several strands of our conversation further. I was rehearsing sentences to say to her, repeating them to myself, as if memorizing a poem. It was a gray, blustery morning, and Father had earlier gone above for breakfast and to lead the daily prayer service, both of which I had begged off, due to my persistent nausea, which, because of the wind-roughened sea, had worsened somewhat.
He did not return to check on me at his accustomed time, and it was not until late in the afternoon that he finally hove into view at the door of the tiny cabin, holding to the jambs for support against the tossing of the ship. I was lonely and glad to see him, for we had not spoken when he left, and I wanted to tell him about my meeting with the remarkable Miss Peabody.