"In every sense." Mrs. Russecks's voice came from the hallway stairs and was followed by the lady herself. Ebenezer rose quickly from his chair and apologized for speaking indiscreetly.
"Thou'rt guilty of nothing," Mrs. Russecks said, looking past him to her daughter. " 'Tis you that have been naughty, Henrietta, to tell tales out of school — " She got no farther, for Henrietta ran weeping to embrace her mother and beg forgiveness; yet it was clear that the girl's emotion was not contrition for any misdemeanor, but sympathy and love inspired by what she had learned. Mrs. Russecks kissed her forehead and turned her eyes for the first time, eager and yet pained, to the twins; she managed to control her feelings until Anna too was moved to embrace her, whereupon she cried "Sweet babes!" and surrendered to her tears.
There ensued a general chorus of weeping that for some minutes no other sound was heard in the millhouse. Everyone embraced everyone else in the spirit summed up by Ebenezer, the first to speak when the crest of the flood had passed and everyone was sniffling privately.
"Sunt lacrimae rerum," he declared, wiping his eyes.
But the day's surprises were not done. As soon as Mrs. Russecks had satisfied, for the moment, her hunger to embrace the twins and beg pardon for her previous aloofness — refraining, as did Ebenezer, from any illusion to her innocent attempt to seduce him, as well as to her own seduction by Anna's supposed lover Burlingame, either of which in itself could account for her distress — she joined them at the tea table and said to Ebenezer, "You made good your vow to surpass Henrietta's story with a postscript, Eben (I'God, how can my babies have grown so! And what trials have they not suffered!); but I believe I may yet snatch back the prize with a postscript of my own. To begin with, that 'vicious lying gossip' about your father and myself — 'twas gossip in sooth, and vicious, but it was no lie. For three years after poor Anne's death — that was their mother, Henrietta — Andrew and I mourned her together. But in the fourth year — i'faith, I loved him then, and hinted vainly at betrothal! — in the fourth year I was in sooth his mistress. Prithee forgive me for't!"
Both twins embraced her again and declared there was nothing to forgive. "On the contrary," Ebenezer said grimly, " 'tis my father needs forgiving. I see now what you meant by saying you were abandoned in every sense."
"Nay," Mrs. Russecks said, "there is more. ." She raised her eyes painfully to Mary, whose face suddenly changed from deep-frowned reflection to understanding. "Ah, God, Roxie!"
Mrs. Russecks nodded. "You have guessed it, my dear." She sniffed, took both of Henrietta's hands in hers across the table, and looked unfalteringly at her daughter as she spoke. "Twice in my life I've loved a man. The first was Benjy Long, a pretty farmer-boy that lived near Uncle Jacques: he it was I gave my maidenhead to, when I was sixteen, and anon conceived his child; he it was ran off to sea when I would not cross my guardian's wishes, nor have I heard of him from that day to this; and he it is, methinks, that still hath letters-patent to my heart — though I daresay he's either long since fat and married or long since dead!" She laughed briefly and then grew sad again. "Shall I prove to you that time is no cure for folly? Often and often, when Andrew left me and when Harry would abuse me, I'd pray to little Benjy as to God, and to this hour my poor heart falters when a stranger comes to call — " She smiled at Ebenezer. "Especially if he calls himself Sir Benjamin!"
"Ah, Christ, forgive me!" Ebenezer pleaded. Mrs. Russecks indicated with a gesture that there was nothing to pardon and returned her attention to Henrietta. "That was my first love. Andrew was the other, and far the greater, but merely to think of him drives me near to madness. ." She paused to recompose herself. "Let me put it thus, my dears: this second love affair was in essence the first, save for two important differences. One, as you know already, is that my lover abandoned me. ." She squeezed her daughter's hands. "The other is that this time the baby lived."
18: The Poet Wonders Whether the Course of Human History Is a Progress, a Drama, a Retrogression, a Cycle, an Undulation, a Vortex, a Right- or Left-Handed Spiral, a Mere Continuum, or What Have You. Certain Evidence Is Brought Forward, but of an Ambiguous and Inconclusive Nature
The import of Mrs. Russecks's last remark occasioned a new round of joyful and sympathetic embraces. Mrs. Russecks apologized to Ebenezer and Anna for having transferred her resentment to them, and they apologized in turn for their father's ungentlemanly behavior of two dozen years earlier; Henrietta begged her mother's retroactive forgiveness for all the times she had inveighed against her for marrying Russecks, and Roxanne begged reciprocal forgiveness for having conceived her out of wedlock as well as for the double injury of subjecting her to Sir Harry's maltreatment and obliging her to believe she was his daughter. Even Mary was included, for the well-kept secret had caused occasional misunderstandings on both sides during her long friendship with the miller's wife. There being no wine on the premises, when all were shriven and embraced, a new pot of tea was boiled for celebratory use, and, alternately shy and demonstrative, the new relatives talked long into the evening. For all her avowed hatred of Andrew Cooke, Roxanne was exceedingly curious about his life in England and his present highly questionable position; that night, moreover, Anna and Henrietta, who slept together, must each have taken the other completely into her confidence, for Ebenezer was surprised to observe next morning that they spoke freely of Henry Burlingame. At breakfast the three young people were in almost hilarious spirits: Ebenezer traded Hudibrastics with Henrietta, whom he found to have a real gift for satire, and Anna declared herself totally unconcerned about the future — as far as she was concerned, Roxanne was her mother too, and she would be content if she never saw Malden or her father again. Roxanne and Mary looked on joyfully, wiping their eyes on an apron-hem from time to time.
By midmorning it had been decided that the Russeckses would travel with the Cookes to Anne Arundel Town as soon as McEvoy returned from Bloodsworth Island; there Roxanne and Henrietta would remain until the miller's estate was sold, whereupon they (and, Henrietta hinted demurely, perhaps McEvoy) would sail for England and a new life. Ebenezer would carry his urgent message to Governor Nicholson and, if the situation warranted, plead for gubernatorial restitution of his estate on grounds that it was being used for activities subversive to the welfare of the Province; if his appeal bore no fruit or his father proved unrelenting, he and Anna would leave Maryland also as members of Roxanne's family, and he would endeavor to find employment in London. Henry Burlingame and Joan Toast, though they weighed heavily on the twins' minds, were provisionally excluded from their plans, since the whereabouts of the former and the attitude of the latter were uncertain.
Their spirits were lifted even higher by the appearance, shortly after noontime, of McEvoy and Bertrand, who announced that Captain Cairn was waiting with his sloop in the creek to ferry them anywhere in the world. McEvoy kissed Henrietta ardently, and her mother as well, and Bertrand embraced his master with speechless gratitude.
"Would ye fancy it?" McEvoy laughed. "Those wretches thought we'd left 'em stranded! When they saw me ride in with old Bill-o'-the-Goose they reckoned I'd been captured again, and commenced to give ye whatfor!" His face darkened for a moment, and while Bertrand professed his delight at seeing Miss Anna safe and sound, he confided to Ebenezer, " 'Twas all Dick Parker and the others could manage to get us out alive. Our friend Billy Rumbly hath gone salvage altogether, and would have had us murthered on the spot!"