Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [33]
He devised instead a system whereby her knowledge of herbs and barks and certain surgical practices followed a logical pattern. They were not isolated facts. What had seemed a set of arbitrary facts, that bandages should be clean, water should be boiled, bleeding should be cauterized and not prolonged by leeches, that certain natural aids had medicinal qualities, and that these practices often induced favorable results, pointed to a larger synthesis of knowledge.
And what could that be? Hubert believed in a medical heresy so bizarre that even to speak it would imperil his standing as a scientist. Nor was he a doctor. He studied Life Processes, and his observations suggested to him the possibility that illness and infection and perhaps even disease itself were not related to spells and self-generated evils, but to invisible and invasive forces from nature.
Hubert was not disturbed by her widowhood. He saw her only as a young woman of vigorous mind and spirit in need of more stimulating surroundings and a gentler community of intelligent women. He meant Cambridge, where she could find lodging and employment as a governess. She suspected that he also meant marriage, after a decent interval, but to his credit or his shame, it was never mentioned.
Gabriel Legge had left her sufficient money to indulge her own independence, at least for several years, and the control over it was entirely hers. Eventually, of course, she would have to marry again or find suitable employment, or perhaps even return to Massachusetts, but none of those decisions seemed pressing. She recognized, as Hubert spoke of the Continent and the unfettered life of the mind that he led, so different from the fancies that drove Gabriel Legge’s fabulous journeys, that the thought of travel excited her. She was tired of waiting at home, of not bestirring herself in the rich new world opening out at every hand. Even pouches of diamonds did not seem sufficient compensation for idleness.
12
HANNAH’S ALTERNATE prospects of life as a widowed Cambridge governess or as the wife of a placid introvert like Hubert were overthrown just after dawn in late April 1694 by the casual, almost languid, appearance of Gabriel Legge crossing the stone bridge in front of the cottage gate.
He had taken pains over his appearance. Hardly the sailor on leave, he appeared, in his silks and breeches, the gold-crowned walking stick, the powdered wig and the trademark silk eye patch, every inch the imperial magistrate.
“We’ll sell the Stepney cottage, of course.” It was never suitable for a man of his height. The beams cut across the parlor at eye level. “I presume you’ll be ready in a fortnight. We sail for Fort St. Sebastian on the Fortune.”
“The Fortune? The Fortune! Whatever happened to the mad Portugee?” She took her cue from Gabriel Legge, for surely had he crawled across the stone bridge begging for forgiveness, seeking accommodation, apologizing for having left her alone and dishonored (which eventually would have been the case), she would have nursed him back to health, forgiven him the hint of deceit in the tale he had told. But he’d rather chosen an approach that admitted nothing, withheld the facts of his past eighteen months and the motives for his cruelty.
“Swallowed by a whale off Grand Comoro and deposited on the Portugee shore. A full desert and jungle year I spent, tearing flesh from the hands of baboons, outwitting the jungle cats, outsmarting the forest savages, joining slavers up the African coast …”
The same old Gabriel Legge. He told her that now he had gone down to Leadenhall Street and joined the Honourable