"And I pray you, Uncle John, understand me! I did not mean it like that. I meant—if I sailed, I'd be learning things that might make me of some use to you in the business."
"Oh? So?... Well, you know that's near my heart. A few days ago you was undecided. We spoke of it, coming home from seeing Artemis return—did we not?"
"Yes, Uncle John."
"And I feared I was nursing an old man's vanity. Urging on you something that might be unwelcome.... Mind you, Ben, I am not your master and no one shall be. I will not say to you, go there, do this, as I might to the common sort. Somehow, of late years, I don't much fancy the meaning they give to the word 'gentleman' in England. Joseph Cory was a farmer, and a better gentleman than any milord in London. Yes, in this land the word doth seem to be earning a new definition, or maybe it did alway own it, but title-dazed Europe is in no posture to comprehend such a thing. You are a gentleman's son, Ben. I say there's an aristocracy which hath nothing at all to do with wealth or position, nor with ancestry neither except as a parent's good qualities do often appear in the children. I mean the aristocracy of the good mind with the good heart—you will not find that very often on earth, Benjamin. You are a gentleman, and no one may order you about, only guide a little, so far as love and friendship may do it, while you—while you are yet a boy."
Ben felt the fire in his cheeks, and dreaded stammering. "Well, sir, might it not be that sailing with Artemis would help me decide, or at least understand better, what I wish to do?"
"It—might.... Mind, I've not said yea or nay. Don't press me more on it now. It may be two weeks yet before Artemis is ready to go. Mr. Banning of Gloucester is delaying me. His dem'd price is too dear, noticed it a thousand times. Uh—don't you think so?"
If Reuben had been in the room he would have known how Ben, in the face of all common sense, was very nearly taking that to mean yes. He would have seen how the inner lamp steadied and brightened in a manner hardly reasonable when the overt topic was nothing more ecstatic than the current value of salt codfish. Why, the old man had not even said that Artemis would put out for New York instead of Barbados....
On Sunday the rain continued. Rob Grimes, an accomplished backslider with sixty-odd years of sin to his credit, marched off to meeting as usual and retained sanctity like a best suit until Monday morning, when Mr. Kenny's nervous gray gelding acted up at sight of the saddle and caused the first lapse into blasphemy. It was a conspiracy of the Powers against Rob, that everything should always go wrong on Monday morning, so that for the rest of the week his state of grace should be nothing but a God-damned ruin. Kate Dobson slipped away to the Anglican services that she found a comfort in a barbarous land. John Kenny fretted at home—even he might have been subject to arrest and fine for unnecessary travel on the Sabbath—fretted like one under enchantment who must spend a certain twenty-four hours of every week in the guise of a rabbit, a shrewd one who knows very well that if he should venture abroad where the godly are baying he'd be a gone bunny.
In their first year at Roxbury, Ben and Reuben had been similarly housebound on the Lord's day. But on a morning of urgent springtime in the year 1705, Reuben had advanced the doctrine that one could easily pass from the back door through the orchard and to the woods with no danger of detection, and look: anyone who did observe the sin would be far from any route to the meeting-house and therefore a sinner himself; wouldn't he? "Besides, sir," said Reuben Cory, "we've a'ready done it a couple-three times." "Oh," said John Kenny. "I find your reasoning faultless but incomplete. You omit, Mr. Cory, reference to the necessity of wearing your brown suits that don't show at a distance, and of promising to avoid the sky line and open places. Some say reason doth advance, even in these times. I a'n't sure. Wear your brown suits...."
On the Sunday after the death of Jan Dyckman, the rain was heavy enough to discourage even Reuben's need to wander. He felt it unsafe to go to Mr. Welland's cottage, for part of the approach out of the back fields was visible from the main street of Roxbury; and anyway Ben shamefacedly declared he needed help with the next half-acre of Cicero.