Ben knew that a vulnerable quality in Reuben troubled their father. It was easy to wound Reuben. Ben had done it more than once, without intent and with regret in the same moment. No doubt Joseph Cory prayed the boy would grow stronger armor with increase of manhood.
Reuben Cory watched his tall brother lift a candle in its pewter sconce and trim a blob of wax with his thumbnail. Ben's hand, firm below the flame and golden, brought Reuben the amazement of a miracle, a thing never seen before. A familiar knife-scar on the forefinger—even that was new, though Reuben recalled quite well how Ben had got it ignobly a year ago by losing his patience when Jesse Plum was showing him how to whittle a maple stick. A text from the prescribed Scriptural reading sounded in Reuben's mind, as happened so often when he was startled, delighted or disturbed: I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. But it seemed to the boy that something here was false. The thought might be dutiful and correct, yet was he actually praising the Lord for having made Ben beautiful? Why, hardly. Rather he knew, as with Puritan skill and insistence he searched his heart, that he was more of a mind to praise Ben for being himself—which was heresy, and of course absurd. Uncle John's letter must be to blame.
The marvel of Ben's hand moved out of the concentrated light. Reuben rose, aware that Ben wished him to come along without a fuss. The letter, lying open as his father had left it on the table, pulled at him. His mother would not be pleased to have him study it. In spite of that, in spite of his own uneasiness, his eyes probed swiftly at it, and hungrily. Mr. Kenny had used a brownish ink; light slanting from a new angle as Ben moved the candle transfigured the writing to iridescent gold: It is a sorrie thing that a Man should refrayne from speaking his Minde.... He hath his Light, so let mee live by mine owne. Reuben's eyes snatched a few lines further on, words his father had not read aloud: Nor no man, by threat of Damnation nor Promiss of Paradise, shall ever betray me into the Folly of hating my Naybor, whether in the name of Princes who are but Men or in the name of a God I knowe not.
Reuben turned away clumsily, shocked and confused. It was clear why his father had read no more aloud. His mother might have offered no comment at all; but.... Ben was regarding him kindly, perhaps puzzled, across the hot flower of the candle. "Come on, Ru——" and Ben's voice cracked woefully, baritone to treble and back to a rumble.
Looking then at none of them, Reuben could feel certain lines of force: their mother's tender amusement at the cracking of Ben's voice, and Ben's helpless annoyance at that amusement, and from the other seat by the fireplace a quiet contemplation neither amused nor much concerned with judgment. And here at the center of the lines of force, here within himself, a wonder much like a pain just below the ribs, that anyone so admired and respected as Uncle John could be such a tremendous heretic. A God I know not?—that shook the ground. And Reuben was certain that, for the present at least, he could not speak to his father about that fretful thing under the ribs.
Nor even to Ben.
Ben noticed that Reuben was making less snickering circumstance than usual of diving under the covers in the chill of the garret. Both had wriggled into dark security before Ben remembered that Ru had not said prayers at all—for him almost unprecedented—nor had Ben himself done so. Uneasily Ben decided to let it go this once. Reuben had lapsed into heavy stillness and would certainly resent a jab in the back. As for himself, he could pray silently in bed: Father and Mother both said so.
So far as Ben knew, Reuben was sleeping as well as ever these nights, starting dutifully on his own side buried to the nose, but later twitching in sleep, flinging himself about—frequently plagued, Ben knew, by terrifying dreams. Often, when he was well down in sleep, his arm would arrive on Ben's chest with a hard impatient flop; then, usually, quiet. Ben could not remove the arm without waking him, which might bring on an hour's talking-spell. Ben enjoyed those, but on these February nights Ben wanted to sleep, and an unfamiliar difficulty in it was annoying him like a sore tooth.