Читать книгу The Last Gentleman - Shirley Barker - Страница 4

2.

ALL BE QUIET

IN PORTSMOUTH

“Nine o’ the clock, rain, fog, an’ all be quiet in Portsmouth!” droned the raucous voice from the small brick watchtower by Market Square.

Lydia, waking, stretched herself as well as she could within the cramped depths of the Flying Stage Coach and peered from the window at the “Strawberry Bank” of the first settlers, named so because of the sweet red fruit that grew so thick on its ancient grasslands in early June. More than a century after, the name still clung, and the country folk went to the “Bank” more often than they went to Portsmouth. The coach rounded the corner now, by the long wooden bulk of the dormered state house, turning into Court Street, and her first thought was that everything looked the same, what little she could see of it. The wet black ledges of the old river headland still cropped out in front of the North Meeting House, the familiar steeple and gambrel roofs of the nearby houses still reached upward in the thick night. They crossed Queen Street, and she gave a little sigh of relief. Since she and Hugh Giffard were the only passengers, Bart was apparently driving them straight to John Wentworth’s house instead of making them alight at the stables near the tavern.

As she remembered she would soon have to face the young Englishman openly in the lighted hall with others standing by, she felt her cheeks grow hot in the dark. It was no use to tell herself that he alone had been to blame for the happening between them. She knew better than that. But it was not the past that engaged her thoughts now so much as the future. Living in the same house, as they would likely be for the next few months, what would happen when they were together in some soft autumn twilight with no Bart Stavers by? Oh, it was too soon, too soon, she thought. Lonely as she had been, she was not yet ready to break her fast of loneliness. It was not for some stroke of sudden adventure like this, but to re-enter her old life slowly that she had come home to Portsmouth. Why was it that things happened so swiftly, too swiftly—or never happened at all?

Impatiently she smoothed her skirts and her hair, for the governor’s house was no long way from the middle of town, and they should be approaching it. She looked out again. Down Pleasant Street as they drove by, parlor windows were lighted all along, and a snatch of violin music throbbed in the air by Attorney Samuel Livermore’s house, high-voiced, insistent, and sweet. Dancing, cards, and gay dinners with much wine were the common order of Saturday nights here, she remembered. Perhaps John and Frances would not even be at home to welcome her.

A wind stirred in the elm boughs that almost met over the winding road, and a wet leaf hit the windowpane and clung there—a green leaf of summer. It spoke of an ill winter ahead, her mother used to say, when the green leaves fell before the season had turned them brown. Why did folk strive so hard after news of the future, Lydia wondered, seeking it by stars and tea leaves and the changing weather? Madame Hooper earned her bread by pretending to knowledge of it, and she herself but a few moments ago had been turning her own thoughts in that way. Was it so they might be prepared for trouble, the better to meet it when it fell? But then, foreknowing, they might try to avoid trouble altogether, and thus confuse God’s plan—if He had a plan. Oh, God must have a plan, Lydia felt sure. Not that she had heard it declared so in church. At St. Paul’s and Queen’s Chapel, where she had worshipped, the faith was not preached in that way. It was only that she, Lydia, an orderly creature, expected the universe to operate on an orderly plan. She had not been able to see herself that clearly, had never known herself that well. It was David, smiling, who had told her so. She wondered if Hugh Giffard would admire orderliness in a woman. There were those who did not.

She heard Bart shouting to the horses, and the coach wheels ground to a stop at the edge of the governor’s clipped front lawn. Hugh Giffard handed her out, his ruffles hanging limp and raindrops caught in his eyelashes, but his face as bland and smiling as when she had first caught sight of him in the Wolfe Tavern.

“Journey’s end, Mistress March,” he said without embarrassment. “Are you as chilled and hungry as I am?”

She was about to murmur something, not quite sure what it would be, when the heavy dark door under the glowing fanlight swung open, and John Wentworth himself stood there looking out.

His Majesty’s Governor at thirty-seven stood no taller than most men in Portsmouth, his lean face, half stern, half smiling, was no handsomer than theirs. His red velvet coat was much like other red velvet coats in the province; his powdered hair was the same soft brown as other men’s powdered hair, and worn much the same. If there was a difference about John Wentworth, Lydia thought, as she stood there on his doorstep looking up at him with his wide lighted house behind, it was in the set of his shoulders and the lift of his head. There was a quiet pride and certainty about John Wentworth. Other men might question, but John Wentworth knew. Not that he flaunted his knowledge. But you felt that if John Wentworth said it would rain tomorrow, it would certainly rain.

The sternness went out of his face as he bent forward to greet them; friendly and affable now, he put forth his hand.

“Well done, Hugh, to get her here through the fog before we had time to worry. Even a Londoner could scarce find his way tonight. Welcome, Lydia! Frances was much pleased that you could come. We feared that there would be a husband with claims on you by now, and I cannot see why it has not happened so. For I swear, you are lovelier than ever. What is wrong with the Massachusetts lads?”

Lydia drew back, felt her shoulder brush Hugh’s cloak.

“Why—why, I did have a husband. I thought Frances knew. I wrote to her. When I was married, I wrote. She never answered, but I thought—”

Looking past him down the wide hall with red rugs scattered here and there on the polished floor boards, she could see the graceful carved chairs she remembered so well, the double doors that led to a garden terrace at the back. As she paused to allow herself a moment’s enjoyment of the familiar scene, an ancient round-bellied beagle poked his nose out of the library, sniffed, and then waddled eagerly forward whimpering. Straight to her feet he came, braced his front paws against her knees, and stood there, looking up. She bent to greet him.

“Why, Bugler! You remembered me!” she said.

The governor laughed, but not very heartily. “Of course Bugler remembers. He is too fat and short-winded to hunt with now, so I keep him here in town rather than with the pack at Wolfeborough. An excellent watchdog—so good we have not bothered to repair the broken lock on the kitchen door. But about your marriage, Lydia. You are not Lydia March still? Frances directed your letter in that way, and it must have reached you.”

She looked up at him over the head of the old dog. “Yes, I am Lydia March. I have never been anything else. My husband was David March, his family name the same as mine but we never heard of each other till I went to Newburyport. We were not cousins as you and Frances are. He was newly entered in a counting-house at the Port and owned a farm in the West Parish—on Crane Neck Hill. If our folk were kin, it must have been back in England a long time ago. But I wrote all that in my letter—”

“Frances has been ill,” said John Wentworth abruptly, “ill much of the time. Passed over many of her letters and neglected many things. She has tried to give me a son, but she never carries them full term. This time—as the months pass and she continues well—we dare to hope. Come in, Bart! Take the trunk upstairs to the front chamber at the right. Lydia—Hugh—I have kept you waiting! Let me send to the kitchen for supper, and in the meantime, wine—”

He stood, their host awaiting their pleasure, there in the broad hall that ran between the lighted parlors decked in his wife’s sumptuous taste, rich crimson, white, and gold.

Hugh cleared his throat. “Did I hear Your Excellency speak the good word ‘wine’?” he inquired mockingly.

Responding to his mood, the governor made an exaggerated bow. “You did indeed, sir. Shall it be the tart golden blood of the French vineyards, the liquid rubies of Oporto, the brown madeira with the taste of island sun in it, or—Forgive us, Lydia! Would you like tea—or to go to Frances at once, perhaps?”

“Yes,” said Lydia quickly. “Let me go to Frances, please.” She had not once looked at Hugh since they stepped through the governor’s doorway, had no intention of doing so. “She is lying down, perhaps? In her chamber? Ill—?”

John Wentworth gave a wry smile. “She suffers a slight indisposition,” he answered. “She will tell you about it, no doubt. Shall I call one of the maids?”

“Oh no! But will it disturb her? Would she wish to see me tonight?”

“Yes, very much. She charged me not to let you go to bed till you had visited her. I will have a tray sent to you there.”

He turned toward the kitchen, and Lydia walked straight up the wide, gently rising stairs. At the window on the landing she paused and looked out over the garden and its dripping beech trees and evergreens all black with rain. Then she climbed the shorter flight that led to the front of the house, crossed the hall, and tapped on the door of the chamber where the governor had brought his bride.

A low sound answered her, the wind, perhaps, stirring in the eaves, or a muffled voice from within the bedroom. She waited a moment, then put her hand to the latch and softly opened the door.

Ahead of her she could make out the lines of the four-poster bed with its rose-colored draperies, and as she stepped forward she felt the deep softness of the rose-colored carpet underfoot. The room smelled of red roses, too, not only of Frances’ favorite perfume, but of fresh flowers, the last summer blooms from the Portsmouth gardens. There must be a vase of them nearby, but it was too dark for her to see. No lamps were burning, or candles, and the dying fire in the marble fireplace gave off just enough light so that she could keep from stumbling against chairs, tables, the mahogany case of drawers, the cushioned lolling chair. From the bed came a piteous moan.

Lydia paused in dismay. “A slight indisposition,” John had said. But here lay his wife, all alone and moaning in the dark. She felt a sick fear wake in her vitals. Perhaps Frances’ labor had again come upon her too soon. “Candlemas Day,” she had written, was the time Dr. Hall Jackson had reckoned for her lying-in. But Candlemas Day was far off, the summer hardly gone.

She tried to make her voice serene and comforting. “Frances! It is Lydia. You are ill? Shall I bring help? The maids—or a potion?”

Frances moaned again, but it was a hollow plaintive moan rather than one of sharp anguish. Going near to her, Lydia mounted the mahogany bed-steps and stood there looking down at the inert figure under the rosy counterpane. She could see quite well in the dim light now, the outline of the graceful shoulders through the China-silk dressing gown, the cloud of dark hair straying over the pillows. But where the face ought to be was a strange empty whiteness that shocked her. She peered closer. Then she saw that the governor’s lady was wearing a mask contrived of white satin and lace. At that moment the sweet petulant voice spoke.

“Ah, Lydia, I am in a sorry plight, a final extremity! Not these three days have I been able to endure a looking glass.”

The hall door swung shut just then, and the draft of its closing made the little fire flare up on the hearth, so that Lydia could see even more clearly. Frances Wentworth’s changing eyes gazed out through little slits in the mask. It almost seemed that they held a hint of laughter in them.

“Ah, Lydia, a wretched humor has afflicted me. I have implored my governor to hasten to Queen’s Chapel and pray for my recovery, but he only taunts me that it is the price of vanity I pay, and goes back to the affairs of the province.”

“What is the humor?” asked Lydia uncertainly. “Do you suffer? And why is your face covered?”

“Ah, but I suffer torments,” said Frances complacently. “Lydia, do you remember how I would order rouges and perfumes from the House of Gaine in New York—the Venetian paste, and carmine, and Chinese wool; rosewater, and orange water, and eau de lune, and oil of rhodium—jars and vials until my governor swore it cost more to maintain me than to administer the province?”

“I remember writing orders to the House of Gaine,” said Lydia slowly, “but I was not here long—scarce a month, you know, after you were married to the governor.”

“Ah yes, I forget. But you remember that New York potion-peddler, and it was he who brought me to this extremity with his latest importation. ‘Balm of Mecca,’ he called it, warranted to make the skin bloom like rose petals in the sultan’s garden! Fool that I was, I believed his lying prospectus!”

“You bought and applied the Balm of Mecca,” said Lydia a little tartly, impatient that Frances had frightened her so when there was nothing greatly out of order, beginning to feel the weariness of the long journey that lay behind her, “and it raised a rash or a blister?”

“I am disfigured! I am utterly disfigured!” said Frances tragically. “I have been hidden in my bed for three days with my face covered. Meanwhile, the life of the town, I suppose, goes on without me. I am an object of revulsion, an outcast from society! I—”

“Take off your mask,” said Lydia calmly, “and let me see you. Have you tried cures for it? Bathing or ointment? Have you called Hall Jackson or Dr. Cutter?”

Frances flung up her slender white hands as if to protect her face. “I have hidden in my bed and nursed my shame in secret! Not even to you will I reveal—!”

Lydia was tired and hungry and her patience was gone.

“Oh, stop being so foolish!” she cried, and reached out suddenly, stripping the mask away. Then she stood still, gazing down into the red swollen countenance of the most beautiful woman in America.

She looked a long time, unable to turn away. Hair, and eyes, and the perfect planes of the face were still so lovely in spite of the pustules and patches of fleshly disfigurement.

“Is it not like St. Anthony’s Fire?” demanded Frances eagerly. “Is it not like the blight of the smallpox, like the curse of scorpions?”

“It looks more like poison ivy to me,” said Lydia bluntly. “Tomorrow I will make you a poultice of plantain leaves for it—and maybe a dose of rhubarb—”

Frances clapped the mask back over her face, and this time the eyes that peered through the slits seemed cruelly mocking.

“Lydia, will you never learn sweetness? When I turn to you for sympathy, I get the edge of a shrew’s tongue. How you ever think to find a husband—”

“I am weary with telling people that I had a husband,” Lydia snapped. “I had a husband, and I found him with no trouble. He died, but I am not looking for another. I wrote and invited you to my wedding, but you never answered me!”

“Lydia!” the voice from the rose-hung bed had changed, become low and pulsating, husky with compassion. “Lydia, I swear I never had such a letter from you. My dear, what a monster you must have thought me! But tell me—when did this happen?”

“It was that summer, the summer after I went away from here. June the thirtieth, 1770! I could not forget that date, but I had them cut it on David’s gravestone, for when I am gone there will be no one who remembers it.”

A bony woman in a russet dress and a tow apron stalked through the doorway carrying a tea tray. She set it down on the table of japanned walnut near the bed, lighted the candles in a wall sconce, and lingered a moment, tossing her head on its long neck like a restless horse, waiting apparently for further orders.

“It is enough, Prue,” said Frances calmly. “You may go to bed now. We shall require nothing more.”

The woman strode wordlessly from the room, and the governor’s lady moved nearer to the edge of the bed.

“One of my governor’s Yorkshire serving women,” she said. “I had rather have our own maids from about here; a fisherman’s daughter raised in Braveboat Harbor or a girl from the farms around Great Bay. But if the foible pleases him—” She flung out her hands in an engaging gesture. “Lydia, will you pour the tea.”

Lydia lifted the silver pot and filled the enameled china cups with the steaming liquid. She wondered fleetingly how it happened that tea could be drunk in Governor John Wentworth’s house when it was supposed to be outlawed in the province. The New Hampshire towns as well as their neighbors in Massachusetts, she thought, had vowed they would purchase no more tea. But in her weariness the quarrels of nations seemed far off and trivial to her, so she did not raise the question. Instead she pushed the plate of candied fruits to one side and served herself to stewed pigeon from the covered silver tureen.

Frances declined food but sipped the hot tea gingerly through her cracked lips. After a moment she spoke again, and this time her voice was bitter.

“I, too, remember that June of 1770. On the ninth day of it my son was born—dead! And I had been less than seven months married! Gossip was loud in Portsmouth, Lydia. There are many who were not sorry for me. I do not think I read or answered any of my letters that summer.”

Warmed and refreshed now, Lydia began to feel ashamed of her former impatience, felt again all her old affection and loyalty for Frances Wentworth.

“I do not see why there should be gossip,” she answered. “I was close to you then, and I know as well as you do that the child must have belonged to your husband John. But your husband Theodore was not then nine months dead. In the eyes of the world and the law, it might have been his. Either way, it was not a bastard birth and no shame to you.”

“But Theodore had been ill so long, Lyddy! He could not father a child, and the whole town knew it. We knew all that summer he was dying! You remember!”

“Yes, I remember,” agreed Lydia.

She remembered the long hot August, the cold rains of September, and the scarlet and gold leaves blowing past the Atkinson house in Pitt Street; the grief of old Theodore, the province secretary, as he watched his son dwindle away. She remembered how she had lain in her attic chamber in that house, waking long at night; lain there hoping for the man to die. To wish death to any person was, she well knew, a wicked thing, but she could not have done otherwise then. She did not even have the excuse that she wished it because the frail young man was suffering. He was not suffering, merely growing shadow-thin and daily weaker, coughing steadily, the low, apologetic cough.

“I am a trial to you, Frances,” he would croak. “The dancing tonight at the Assembly House—you must not miss—for me—you must go—John will escort you.” And she had laughed and gone with John.

All that summer Lydia watched the old love that had existed between John Wentworth and his cousin Frances, before she had married and he had gone away to England; watched it wake, and quicken, and burn with intensity that threatened havoc—what havoc she could only guess. She had prayed for the young husband to die before the lovers reached the end of their endurance and a crisis broke that meant tragedy for all three rather than for only the one. Well, her prayers had been answered, as evil ones often are. Young Theodore Atkinson had died almost soon enough—not quite—since Frances had had the ill luck to bear the too-early child.

She became aware that Frances was questioning her.

“Tell me about your husband, Lydia. You say he is dead? Are you sorry? Were you happy with him?”

“We were happy,” said Lydia slowly, “that is—we were as happy as most, I think. He was a good man and kind to me. We had our own house, on the side of a high hill, where I could watch the sun rise over the white beaches of Plum Island in the morning, and sink down all red in New Hampshire at the fall of dark. When I went home as a bride, I expected to live there all my life and rear my children there. But I never had any children.”

“Nor conceived any?” The mask slipped away from Frances’ face as she bent forward intently to catch the reply of her friend.

Lydia shook her head. “No, I do not think so. There was never a sign of it that I knew.”

“Do you think you are barren, Lydia? Or was he ailing, like my poor lad? From the first he was, and never a fit husband for me. But you—?”

“I do not know why it was so with us,” said Lydia soberly, “for we were both well and strong.” She poured herself another cup of tea so as not to have to meet Frances’ curious eyes.

“But he died,” protested Frances, “he died young! Or was he older than you?”

“He was twenty-four,” said Lydia flatly. Best to tell it all now, she thought, and not have to go over it again and again. “And it was not of age or illness that he died. It happened last spring, the day of the fourth return of the Boston Massacre—a foolish thing for men to celebrate, ring church bells and build bonfires about. But that was what they did in Newburyport, and David and I rode down to see. A house by the Frog Pond took fire from a blazing brand that lit on its roof, and David and a score of others hastened to fetch pails of water or dashed inside to save the goods that were there. Then the roof fell and David—David—! The others all leaped free. They came to his funeral marching two by two, and told me earnestly that if there was anything I needed, to call on them. Three of the single ones have even offered marriage to me.”

Both women were silent. Then Lydia went on. “But I could not forget David. Whenever I turned a corner, he was there. Sometimes as I sat alone at twilight in our house on Crane Neck Hill and watched the lights spring up all over the valley when the farm wives lit their candles, I heard his step coming in from the fields to supper, just as he used to do. So you see—when I had your letter I was glad to come away.”

“Yes, indeed I do see. Poor Lydia.” Frances leaned back on her pillows and readjusted her mask. “But David is gone, and you must forget him. Now that you are at home, do you think to tangle again with your Londonderry lad, by any chance?”

Lydia felt her face turn hot. She did not look at Frances, but she knew the governor’s wife was watching her sharply.

“He will have forgotten me by now. I cannot matter to him any more, and I doubt that I ever did,” she answered.

“And you sound as if you were sorry for it. I told you then to go with him while you had the chance—if that was what you wanted, and I think it was. I told you then that we do not live forever, Lydia.”

“Live forever?” cried Lydia quickly. “He’s not—? Nothing has happened to him?”

“Not so far as I know,” replied Frances in an idle tone, her interest seeming to wane, “but I am little aware of what goes on in the back country. It seems to me he has served John as a guide sometimes when he went to survey the forests—or perhaps it is in the road-making. But now I am very tired, as I know you must be, and my governor will be coming to me soon. Do you know where you are to sleep?”

“Why, in the east chamber, I suppose. My trunk was taken there.”

“Yes, in the east chamber. Little Dorothy has the room behind this one—the room where you used to be. She likes it there, she says, for it does not get the morning sun, and it is her custom to sleep late. Have you heard about Dorothy?”

“Dorothy? The young Englishman’s sister? I think he told me that was her name.”

“Yes, Dorothy Giffard. She is scarcely more than a child who should be put to school. I hope you will take a hand with her, Lydia, and with our nieces, and one or two more—but Dorothy, the men go mad for her. I cannot see why, for she has scarce the beginnings of a bosom, and a face no one would turn to look at in the street. Well, good night, Lyddy. Tomorrow we will compare many old notes and spell out plain all that has happened while we were apart.”

Crossing to the east chamber, Lydia could hear the men’s low voices as they talked downstairs in the library with the door open. Again she caught the familiar word that was on all men’s lips nowadays, the word that in her childhood meant nothing but a heap of dried leaves in a crock on the kitchen shelf—tea.

John Wentworth was speaking. “There’s a rumor, Hugh, that Ned Parry expects another shipment from the East India Company. We had a near-riot here when it happened in June, you remember. Tempers were high then, but they cooled, they cooled, sir, and if it happens again, I look for no real disturbance. Still, if trouble comes”—his voice rang out like the clang of an iron bell—“I have my tempers, too. I shall meet them halfway.”

She strained her ears for Hugh’s reply, but she could not catch it, and the voices sank back to a low hum again as she moved away from the head of the staircase.

Once in the spacious bedroom with hangings of blue and ivory, she felt weariness overcome her again. Yorkshire Prue or some other servant had left a small fire on the hearth and a bedside candle lighted, but she undressed hastily, covering the one and blowing out the other, without bothering to open her trunk. She would sleep in her shift for tonight. Thus thinly clad, she stood a moment looking across the narrow street and the shadowy bulk of the governor’s stables to where the black waters of the Piscataqua drained seaward like a great snake crawling through the dark. She could not see the river or the low houses along its shore, hardly the stable roof only a few yards off, because the fog was so thick. But she did not need to see. She remembered well. All day she had been looking forward to this moment, wondered how she would feel in her heart when she was finally alone with the exultation of being back in Portsmouth, back at the edge of the familiar river and all the farm and forest country that lay behind. But now she did not feel any exultation. She felt chilled and sleepy. Hardly had she let herself sink down into the depths of the huge featherbed when she felt her limbs grow heavy and her eyelids close—she was at home—at home—asleep—

And then suddenly she started broad awake. She had slept, she knew—but for minutes or hours? She could not tell, for the darkness still hid everything outside. Her room was dark, too, black dark. Save for the gray oblongs of windows, she could see no single thing. Her body seemed weighted with lead when she tried to move, and her mind began to wonder what had awakened her. Then she heard it! A sound like a light step on a yielding stair! Only the one step, and that softer than the tiny thud when you dropped a bobbin wound with thick yarn. She listened for the light step to be repeated, but it was not. And still she lay there, startled and uncomfortable, every moment more wide awake.

It might have been a servant about some ordinary errand. It might have been a mouse scurrying down from the attic to the kitchen larder. Perhaps she had not heard it at all. She could hardly believe it was caused by some spectral thing. Old houses had ghosts, she knew, but this was not an old house. She herself could remember the building of it! There had never so much as been a death there, so far as she knew. The provincial assembly had rented it for their young governor when he first took office, a bachelor then, just back from four years in England, with no establishment of his own. Everyone had expected that he would fall heir to the nearby estate of the old governor, Benning, his uncle, but that could not have happened, for Benning was dead—she had read in the Essex Gazette about his funeral—and John and Frances still lived in the hired house in town. Tomorrow she would ask—! Her mind wandered, still dull with sleep.

Then a long-drawn quavering howl rose from somewhere on the lower floor. At first it sounded to Lydia like the screeching of a demon straight out of hell’s pit. Then she remembered the fat old beagle hound. Bugler used to make a noise like that whenever a neighboring cat streaked through the garden. The howl was cut off as sharply as if severed by a knife blade. She heard the governor’s voice from across the hall, muffled, since he must have been calling from his bed without opening the chamber door.

“Bugler! What’s wrong, lad?”

The light step did not come again. The howl was not repeated. Lydia waited, expecting to hear John Wentworth’s steps as he got up to investigate. But John Wentworth did not get up. She lay tense and sleepless, waiting, listening, but nothing happened. Outside, a little wind stirred in the eaves and rattled a loose shutter. Winds were stirring everywhere now, driving the fog seaward. Through the upper panes in the long window tiny stars began to show clear. Tomorrow, she thought, would be a fair day. Now another sound came, a reassuring, familiar sound: the rattle of the swinging lantern the night watch carried, the drone of his gruff voice in the deserted street.

“Stars, wind, three o’ the clock, an’ all be quiet in Portsmouth!”

Lydia turned on her pillow restlessly. Her eyes felt heavy and stiff and staring but they refused to close. Fear was on her, and uneasiness, and apprehension she could not explain. Then her eyes did close, must have closed, for she was sinking into a deep dream, knowing all the time that it was a dream.

In her dream Governor John Wentworth and his aide, Hugh Giffard, stood together just as they had stood tonight in the wide front doorway. But this time they were facing streetward, and each had his arm across the shoulders of the other.

“You see, Hugh,” the governor was saying, “it’s just as I said. All’s quiet in Portsmouth.”

“Yes,” said the young Englishman grimly, “all’s quiet in Portsmouth. But for how long, Johnny? For how long?”