Read Online The Holder of the World by Bharati Mukherjee - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bharati Mukherjee
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the bellows, stoker of coal, forager among the clinkers with the long tongs—had been taken from her all because of the sudden appearance of Gabriel Legge.
He claimed to be the son of the owner of the Swallow , three hundred and twenty tons. He had come from London, but hailed from Ireland, to scout the colonies for investment, for new forms of imports and exports to the New World to mark its growing stature, its great wealth and taste for finer things. But the old Friends of the Forge, meeting now at a public house rather than the blacksmith’s, guessed the scouting trip was for a wife, that his time limit was the three weeks it would take to load the Swallow with its cargo of hides and timber, and that his eyes had fallen on everyone’s darling, Hester Manning.
Or rather, his eye had fallen. Gabriel Legge, though tall and dashing, had an eye patch. In a wild colony of scalped heads, missing limbs, branded miscreants, maimed and diseased survivors of fires and massacres, a one-eyed man—especially if the patch be black or red or green, sometimes silk, sometimes velvet and even at times encrusted with fine gemstones—is prince. And the stories he told! He made the loss of an eye a stylish statement, pliable to all situations.
My eye! Oh, ’twas nothing, madam. A trifle.
Beware, my good fellow, or I’ll take my vengeance here and now!
Aye, there are savages abroad that make your heathen Nipmuc and Narragansett the very lambs of God!
Tortured? Punished? Heroic? No one knew for sure. He had a thousand stories of imprisonment by Turks; banishment to forests; brigands, highwaymen, pirates.
NO ONE in Salem, admittedly, was a match for Gabriel Legge. Many were stronger, of course, and as for the disposition to place strength in the service of pugnaciousness, the young men of Salem had few equals in the Bay Colony. But Gabriel Legge had a quality—exercised a charm, some said, cast a spell—over men and women alike. And there was always the absence behind the patch, evidence that if charm and persuasiveness failed him, he knew other, darker devices.
He painted great word pictures of a future Salem as great as London, of wealth and grandeur, noble parks and public buildings, and rows of opulent houses appointed with the finest decorations of the Old World and the New. And Gabriel Legge seemed to embody those qualities in his height and accent; he was truly fit to rule, some said, like the worthy inheritor of a bequest not yet given.
And the men wondered if Hester Manning would be fine enough for Gabriel Legge? Hard to imagine the smith’s daughter dressed as a lady, traveling from court to court, or even holding her own in Salem or Boston. She might have been too refined, too high and mighty, for the likes of local boys, but those very same boys began to see the awkwardness—the dullness—of Hester around Gabriel Legge. They noticed her trying all the harder to please, to be ladylike, however, and they felt a hint of Gabriel’s disapproval, even in his kindly smiles toward her. He is the disconcerting agent of Providence in this history.
HANNAH WENT for long lonely walks each morning that May to flee the contrary love she detected in her two mothers’ sharp-tongued injunctions. “Moderation!” Susannah Fitch cautioned, afraid not only of the mob psychosis of the street, but also of her daughter’s destiny that was beginning to shape itself. But Rebecca, whose blood quickened her, and whose memory for its very remoteness knew no abatement, counseled confrontation. “Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation!” whispered her mother’s ghost.
The ghost wore the outline of an Indian sewn on her sleeve. Indian lover.
On one such May morning, Hannah was skipping along a sheer, stony promontory near the new clapboard dwelling of Captain William Maverick, her footsteps as printless as an elf’s, when she heard a man’s throaty cry of grief. She loosened the knotted ribbons of her bonnet to see and hear
He claimed to be the son of the owner of the Swallow , three hundred and twenty tons. He had come from London, but hailed from Ireland, to scout the colonies for investment, for new forms of imports and exports to the New World to mark its growing stature, its great wealth and taste for finer things. But the old Friends of the Forge, meeting now at a public house rather than the blacksmith’s, guessed the scouting trip was for a wife, that his time limit was the three weeks it would take to load the Swallow with its cargo of hides and timber, and that his eyes had fallen on everyone’s darling, Hester Manning.
Or rather, his eye had fallen. Gabriel Legge, though tall and dashing, had an eye patch. In a wild colony of scalped heads, missing limbs, branded miscreants, maimed and diseased survivors of fires and massacres, a one-eyed man—especially if the patch be black or red or green, sometimes silk, sometimes velvet and even at times encrusted with fine gemstones—is prince. And the stories he told! He made the loss of an eye a stylish statement, pliable to all situations.
My eye! Oh, ’twas nothing, madam. A trifle.
Beware, my good fellow, or I’ll take my vengeance here and now!
Aye, there are savages abroad that make your heathen Nipmuc and Narragansett the very lambs of God!
Tortured? Punished? Heroic? No one knew for sure. He had a thousand stories of imprisonment by Turks; banishment to forests; brigands, highwaymen, pirates.
NO ONE in Salem, admittedly, was a match for Gabriel Legge. Many were stronger, of course, and as for the disposition to place strength in the service of pugnaciousness, the young men of Salem had few equals in the Bay Colony. But Gabriel Legge had a quality—exercised a charm, some said, cast a spell—over men and women alike. And there was always the absence behind the patch, evidence that if charm and persuasiveness failed him, he knew other, darker devices.
He painted great word pictures of a future Salem as great as London, of wealth and grandeur, noble parks and public buildings, and rows of opulent houses appointed with the finest decorations of the Old World and the New. And Gabriel Legge seemed to embody those qualities in his height and accent; he was truly fit to rule, some said, like the worthy inheritor of a bequest not yet given.
And the men wondered if Hester Manning would be fine enough for Gabriel Legge? Hard to imagine the smith’s daughter dressed as a lady, traveling from court to court, or even holding her own in Salem or Boston. She might have been too refined, too high and mighty, for the likes of local boys, but those very same boys began to see the awkwardness—the dullness—of Hester around Gabriel Legge. They noticed her trying all the harder to please, to be ladylike, however, and they felt a hint of Gabriel’s disapproval, even in his kindly smiles toward her. He is the disconcerting agent of Providence in this history.
HANNAH WENT for long lonely walks each morning that May to flee the contrary love she detected in her two mothers’ sharp-tongued injunctions. “Moderation!” Susannah Fitch cautioned, afraid not only of the mob psychosis of the street, but also of her daughter’s destiny that was beginning to shape itself. But Rebecca, whose blood quickened her, and whose memory for its very remoteness knew no abatement, counseled confrontation. “Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation!” whispered her mother’s ghost.
The ghost wore the outline of an Indian sewn on her sleeve. Indian lover.
On one such May morning, Hannah was skipping along a sheer, stony promontory near the new clapboard dwelling of Captain William Maverick, her footsteps as printless as an elf’s, when she heard a man’s throaty cry of grief. She loosened the knotted ribbons of her bonnet to see and hear
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