Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction (16 page)

Chapter 24

W
HEN THEY ARRIVED
in Portsmouth, exhausted and still full of vexation, Captain Carlyle presented himself at Colonel Browne's residence to inform him of the death of his cousin Tristram Prescott in the attack on Blackstone. Sanborn had argued for this strategy along the way as the best means to assure a refuge for Rebecca in her uncle's house. While the captain reported to the squire, the others waited by the carriage shed, baiting their horses with oats and water. News of the recent depredations along the frontier had spread to Portsmouth, but the casualties had been unknown. Within twenty minutes, a serving girl emerged and said that Mrs. Browne requested the presence of Miss Rebecca in the hall. Rebecca removed her portfolio from her bag and handed it to Sanborn. “Keep these for me, sir, if you would please.”

“I'm honored,” he said. She turned and walked into the house.

Sanborn believed his purposes would be best served if he stayed out of the way. He did not know, therefore, what transpired between Rebecca and her former custodians, but Captain Carlyle finally came out to say everything had been settled—Rebecca would stay with them and they would arrange for the governor to send a well-armed party out for Mrs. Prescott and her children, and anyone else who desired escort to Portsmouth.

“Thank you, Captain Carlyle, for executing the matter so effectually,” Sanborn said. “I realize this caused you some delay in making your military reports to the governor. But it was a noble office on behalf of Mr. Prescott's wife and children.”

“Don't mention it, Sanborn,” he said. “It was a proper enough duty. But now we must be away.” The sergeant handed him his reins, he mounted his horse, and they rode off with dispatch.

Alone, Sanborn returned his and Rebecca's horses to the stables where he had procured them, and walked directly to his rooms for a wash and a good sleep.

F
OR SOME DAYS
he went about his business, trying to forget the attack he had endured. But he received a gruesome windfall. Sergeant Grimke had appeared at his rooms one day with a gift of thirty pounds from Captain Carlyle. “Your share of the scalp bounty,” he said. He urged the notes toward Sanborn, who stood dumb in his doorway.

“I did nothing to earn this. It's yours and the captain's,” he finally said.

“Don't be a fool, Sanborn. It's yours. You fired on the enemy, just as the captain and I did.”

Now he had bad dreams and difficult nights of waking. The mutilated body of Tristram Prescott seemed to appear before him continually.

And Rebecca. She seemed to haunt his days as well. He could think of no one else. He was functioning well enough to garner a couple of commissions and renew his acquaintances, a renewal made all the more easy by the fascinating story he had to report. He avoided portraying himself as a hero, but he of course said nothing of his fear and caution throughout the experience either. If he embellished anything, it was perhaps the tale of their mad dash for Portsmouth. All this gave him notoriety about town. Even children in the street had taken him for a trooper on account of his pistols. He was able to use this new reputation in favor of his trade. It was just as well he did not swagger, however, because his courage would soon be tested.

A week after his return, he called upon Madam Browne during her morning levee to inquire of Rebecca's state of health and mind. He was kept waiting some time in the hall while other people of standing paid their respects, but he was pleased to have more time to prepare himself.

“Mr. Sanborn,” Mrs. Browne said, as he entered her parlor finally. She did not rise, but indicated a chair nearby among a little cluster of chairs about her tea table. “I understand from Captain Carlyle that we owe you our gratitude for rescuing Rebecca and alerting us immediately upon your return to the dire circumstances of the poor Prescotts.”

“I knew them well, Madam Browne. It was little more than an obligatory and humane duty. But I'm delighted to be of service.”

“Colonel Browne intends some recompense, for your trouble and loyalty.” She held up her hand as he was about to protest politely. “Let me assure you, he insists. Now, as to your calling, let me hazard a guess. You wish to share your concern for the disposition of Mrs. Prescott and her family.”

“Indeed, Madam. And Miss Rebecca as well. We suffered a rather harrowing hegira, no one more than she.” He smiled and accepted the dish of tea she had poured for him.

“You will be pleased to hear, then, that the Prescotts have arrived, just two days ago. One of their Wentworth cousins has taken them in. Mrs. Prescott slowly improves despite her deep mourning. The children will be sent to school, and Colonel Browne is making arrangements for the sale of property and some of Prescott's proprietor's shares to ensure their maintenance.”

“My mind is relieved, madam. The Prescotts were always kind to me, and they did very well by Rebecca.”

“She's a striking and appropriate young lady. We have not fully settled on her disposition yet, of course, but something useful is in order now. It might be well to place her in service for a time, in some pedagogical capacity. Or some manner of beneficence to the community.”

“She is a most clever young woman, Madam Browne. I should like to think that her gifts would be adequately exercised, as I'm sure the Prescotts hoped for her. They placed great trust in her, many responsibilities.”

“She might perform well as a tutor or governess. I agree, Mr. Sanborn.”

“In due time,” he said and smiled pleasantly. “Any family would be fortunate.” He knew Rebecca well enough that she would be disappointed to be placed in service to anyone, especially outside her family relations. His mind raced with alternatives, but he couldn't concentrate at the moment. Madam Browne was not a person to offer your partial attention.

She asked after his commerce and his plans “for the duration of these hostilities.” She was glad to hear he intended to ply his trade about the port again. She even suggested a few personages who might be well disposed now to receiving his card. She would make an inquiry or two herself. This turn of generosity toward him emboldened Sanborn to ask more particularly after Rebecca and whether he might speak with her briefly.

Madam Browne was agreeable, and thus he soon found himself in the kitchen where Rebecca was employed on some gustatory project—the addition of garden herbs, it appeared—with the cook, a widow lady of some fifty or more years. Sanborn and Rebecca seated themselves at a worktable at one end of the room, while the cook continued her ministrations to a pan of lamb.

“You are well?” he asked, once they were seated.

“Well enough,” she said. “I'm all the better for knowing Mrs. Prescott and the children are here. I hope you understand that I did not wish to leave them in their condition. I thank you, however, for your protection and judgment.”

“It was my duty, and my pleasure.” He looked at her. There was some discomfiture below her courteous manner.

She glanced at the cook, and he understood that she wished to speak more plainly.

“Perhaps a moment in the back garden,” he suggested. She stood up and he followed her out the back door of the kitchen. It was a fine day, the garden full of birds stopping by on their autumn migrations. He remembered meeting her here four years ago under the bower they entered, its white blossoms gone now, and he remembered recognizing her as an exotic little creature from the first. But by now she had grown to a woman, and her character had been tempered in labor and trial.

She seated herself and he remained standing. “They speak of sending me into service, Mr. Sanborn.”

“So I understand from Madam Browne,” he said. She did not respond. “It's possible they will avoid placing you in an unpleasant situation.”

“Anything is possible,” she said. “From the least to the finest. That is what troubles me.”

“I see. You don't think they will make every reasonable effort for you?”

“I don't know. It seems clear only that they wish to have me out from underfoot.”

“Perhaps they are reminded too much of an eccentric child. They may come to see you otherwise in time.”

“I don't think I have much time.”

“I don't know how I can help, in this instance, Rebecca. What would you have me do?”

“You have my drawings still?”

“Of course.”

“Safe keep them, please.”

“I never intended differently.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sanborn.”

“You are not contemplating something foolish, I trust.”

“I contemplate many things, foolish and otherwise. Doesn't everyone?”

“I think you understand my meaning, Rebecca. I'm at your service; you know that. But I can't stand by and have you take unnecessary risks.”

She looked up at him, directly into his eyes. “You are quite comfortable here, Mr. Sanborn, aren't you?”

He hesitated. “Quite.”

“That is your good fortune. I find I am less so. I find I am exposed to chance, to the caprice of others. I am no longer a child, yet I am not a proper woman. How does such a thing come to be? I doubt anyone can provide a satisfactory explanation. Yet here I am nonetheless.”

“You are not to be a daughter, you remain merely a charge.”

“That is well put, Mr. Sanborn.” She looked down. “A charge and an inconvenience.”

“I could not presume to tell the squire and his lady their business.”

“Of course not.”

“It's a sadness, Rebecca. But perhaps you should wait to see what decision they make—before you overly vex yourself, I mean.”

“That is little consolation,” she said. “I'm not a boy, or a man, so I cannot go to sea, sir. I cannot work on a masting crew. I cannot join a regiment.”

“That may be so, but you must exercise every caution nonetheless.” He looked her in the eyes to try to discover her secret resolve. “Were I to continue to speak with you, meet with you, we would raise suspicions and doubts. I don't think that would help matters. Why don't we agree to correspond until the decision appears more settled, if there is someone you can trust.”

“There is Abigail, the maid. She's but a year older than I; we formed an understanding as children.”

“Her discretion is reliable.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then we can proceed, quietly. I promise to help by any means within my power.”

“You are very kind, Mr. Sanborn.”

“Let's not assume the worst. Let's proceed with reason and caution.”

“Agreed.”

He took heart that for the moment she was following his lead, however desperate she might have felt beneath her appearance of agreeableness.

Chapter 25

O
NE EVENING THE FOLLOWING WEEK,
Abigail delivered a note from Rebecca to Sanborn's rooms.

“She asked me to wait a reply, sir,” the maid said.

It occurred to him that perhaps she was the best judge of her opportunities for private work. As for securing her productions, it was a large responsibility to have them in his possession. He felt unburdened, he realized, even as he handed the portfolio, bound with a white ribbon and covered in an old painter's cloth, off to Abigail. But in a corner of his mind, a corner room to which he closed the door, he wondered if he might by his compliance be exposing her productions to discovery.

“Please wait another moment, Abigail,” he said, after handing her the sheaves. “I wish to scribble a note to send along with you.” He hurried to his writing table while the servant stood holding her burden patiently. She smiled as she watched Sanborn dash his thoughts on paper. He was indirect in case the note should fall into another's hands. “One must always guard against becoming vulnerable to those who might not comprehend or wish one well,” he scribbled. “I recommend watchfulness and offer you my continued desire to aid you in any extremity.”

He recalled one drawing in particular he had discovered in her portfolio. It was rather simple: a committee seated in a chapel; before them stood an ambitious man of fashion and his wife in high dress. Behind the committee and two aspirants sat anxious people of figure, with lesser lights on the social ladder—suspicion and envy creasing their faces—properly arranged in the pews receding behind them.
Reassigning the Pews,
Rebecca had written as a caption. She had managed to illuminate the absurdity of establishing in the house of God each man's, and therefore each family's, close degree of social rank and privilege amidst constantly changing fortunes. It was such drawings that most spooked him now with the thought of their discovery.

After he sent the maid away with the note, however, he realized fully, again, how powerless he was to provide Rebecca any proffered aid.

H
IS OWN HELPLESSNESS
was made clear to him shortly thereafter. A second note from Rebecca said that, encouraged by their care for her and concerned over subterfuge in the very home of her benefactors, she had requested permission to continue her illustrations of Christian subjects, after the matter of Watts. But she had been rebuked. Indeed, she had made a fatal error. Her request had resulted in her being sent for guidance to the Reverend Mr. Arthur Browne, rector of Queen's Chapel, and she had brought her Watts to the interview; she had hoped “to display the innocence and Christian wholesomeness of my illustrations, both accomplished and intended.” Now, her note read, “I fear the worst as to my final disposition.”

Holding her note in his hand, Sanborn sat in a chair he had placed by his second-floor window. He looked out toward the bustling seaport. Why had he involved himself in Rebecca's troubles for so many years? It was a question he could not adequately answer. His involvement could have no salubrious effect on his own reputation and trade. What was he to do now? He tried to examine his sentiments toward Rebecca but found it difficult to think with honesty about the strength of his affections. His thoughts recoiled from the memory of a dream he had had where the identities of Gingher and Rebecca somehow overlapped. Though it still troubled him, he could not credit the dream by any tortured appeal to reason.

He got up out of his chair in frustration at the muddle of his own thoughts. The only thing he could think to do was to visit Gingher in the rent he now provided her. When, ultimately, they lay unclothed and quiescent on her bed together, the soft afternoon air bathing their slack flesh, their conversation as desultory, intimate, and unguarded as between people paired in a comfortable marriage, he asked again how she and her sister had first come to Boston.

“A ship from Portsmouth, England,” she said.

“Directly? From London, I mean.”

“No. We lingered there.”

“At the port.”

“Yes.”

“Entered the trade there, or later?”

“There. Finally, yes. There was little enough choice. And by then I was very angry.” She sighed deeply at the memory. “So it suited my anger.”

“So, how did you ship for Boston?”

“She followed a trooper, and I followed her.”

“His Majesty's Service.”

“Yes, the colonies.” She let out another sigh. “He betrayed her of course. Soon after we arrived.”

“Of course.”

“We had a falling out, then. I grew ever more angry; now her foolish gullibility infuriated me.”

“So, you left her and Boston.”

“Yes. And there was too much vice already, besides—a mob of working trollops.” She laughed a little. “One of the women suggested I try Portsmouth.”

“Ah. I see.” He thought a moment, feeling that he understood it all at once, what had been said and what was left unsaid.

“How did your sister shame them, your parents, though?”

“Well, they
believed
it a scandal. A man who owned a tailor's shop not far from ours. He took a fancy to Jenny. He and his wife had hardly spoken for years. He left her as if to prove his devotion to Jenny. She swore that she hadn't encouraged his continual attentions, that he deluded himself. But he wouldn't be defeated in his suit. He got it about town that he and Jenny had sworn secret allegiance. To my parents it all became a public shame. It didn't matter that my sister was innocent.”

“Innocent.”

“Yes. She had been known as something of a coquette. But that was just in general, her ways. He took her otherwise. He constructed some frenzied drama between them, acting the blade's part, and broadcasting what he trumped up to be her part. ...” She stopped as if to catch her breath. “It was all so pointless and destructive.”

“And preposterous. You believed her. You believe in your sister.”

“No reason not to. He'd been an coxcomb all his life.”

“Yet you parted, forever. You sisters.”

“Nothing has ever hurt me more. No one will ever hurt me again.”

He moved two fingers gently against her leg. “I'll never hurt you, Gingher.”

“Easily enough said. Now. Here. Like this.” She waved her arm above them to indicate the room, their recumbent state in the aftermath.

“I make you that promise.”

She took his hand and laid it on her naked abdomen.

“I accept your promise, Daniel, in good faith. Still, no one will hurt me again. That's my promise to myself.”

As he lay there absorbing her words, his thoughts by some inexplicable chain of associations turned to Rebecca's plight. What was she suffering now that everything was uncertain again and she was powerless in others' hands? Suddenly an idea came to him: a visit to Parson Browne. It would be the pastor who would report, and most likely recommend, to Squire Browne himself. As he lay in bed, his arm around the dozing Gingher, he recalled his first sight of the parson's Queen's Chapel on a Sunday morning during his early weeks in the city.

He had been exploring his new home afoot when he came to the crest of Church Hill as the gentry were about to emerge from dutiful worship. He stopped to admire the private carriages and costumed footmen waiting for their masters and mistresses. He had arrived just in time, for shortly the doors opened and the gentlemen in great snowy wigs and gold-trimmed coats and embroidered waistcoats and lace ruffles and silk stockings, gold-buckled at knee and shoe, came out into the glowing sunlight—amplified by the adjacent river—and spring air. They wandered down the steps in conversation and consultation—as if in a slow, leisurely dance—toward their impressive chariots. Parson Browne stood on the top step and beamed among his parishioners. Then the ladies emerged in all their own exquisite laces and brocaded dresses and beautiful, exotic mantles. There was a flash of cane and hat trimmed in gold, as if the entire display were designed to enhance the late spring sunshine. Sanborn had stood there stunned by the spectacle, and he knew at that instant, being raised Church of England himself, that it would be of great benefit to make Queen's his own chapel.

Like so many other men of name, he had by now come to know the curate, and he would, he thought as he lay in Gingher's damp bed, send his card around to request an interview.

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK,
Parson Browne's black servant Pompey led Sanborn into the front parlor at the appointed time. Sanborn chose one of the many flag-bottom chairs to sit in and observed once again, for he had sat here on several occasions, the modest elegance of the room's appointments. The room spoke of a man who, though he would never achieve wealth himself, would always remain a center for the society—the round of cooperation, connection, and obligation—of wealthy men. When Parson Browne entered, they exchanged warm greetings, the parson indicating that Sanborn resume his seat while he chose his favored Gardner Windsor chair. A glass of sherry, the parson suggested, would be in order.

Sanborn liked the parson. There was little cant about him, normally, and he had been an athlete in his youth and during his Trinity College days, in Dublin. He reportedly had been capable of leaping over a pitchfork balanced upon two others, and his physical presence was still imposing, if now given to the stockiness of a man into his forties. He also had the reputation of a formidable scholar, having once in fact labored as private secretary to Dean Swift in the interim between taking his B.A. and M.A. degrees.

They divagated over the Indian troubles and trade, over an anecdote or two, and then Sanborn turned to the business he had intimated in his note to Parson Browne.

“I spoke to the young woman, yes,” the parson confirmed, “and I must say the experience, after we dispensed with introductory courtesies and pleasantries, was disconcerting.” He looked at Sanborn in a friendly manner. “I understand you are chiefly responsible for rescuing her from the ravages suffered at Blackstone.”

“I, in the company of Captain Carlyle and one of his men, was rather rescuing myself and brought Rebecca along with me,” Sanborn offered, “for having known her and even taken her likeness during her residence at Colonel Browne's.”

“You're too modest, Daniel. The colonel and his wife speak well of you. Word is that your own heroism in battle did much to disperse the enemy, though no one could have saved poor Mr. Prescott from his fate, as I understand it.”

“He was determined to root out the destroyers of his town at all costs, poor man. It's his actions that approached heroism, I assure you, Parson, not mine.”

“Nonsense,” the parson insisted. “But as to Miss Rebecca, I must say the colonel has difficulty on his hands, there. Do you know the effrontery of that fair creature, Daniel? When I reminded her that, divine subjects or no, the Brownes for very good reasons had their own designs for her, she had the face to quote the Archbishop of Cambray:
‘In our daughters we take care of their persons and neglect their minds.'
I said to her, My dear young lady, you dare quote archbishops to me? And, I pursued her effrontery: Do you tell me that you converse with great churchmen now, living and dead?”

Sanborn stifled a laugh. “Forgive me, Parson. I know her ways. She's unsettled me many a time.” He held up a finger to detain the parson a moment longer. “But I can assure you she is extraordinarily clever and a gifted draftsman and painter. So I find I indulge her much more than perhaps one should.”

“I care little enough for all her cleverness,” the parson said.

“Understandable, certainly. How, may I ask, did she respond to your disapprobation?”

“She said that she had conversed with too few churchmen in her time, but that she had only read the archbishop in Essex—John Essex's
The Young Ladies Conduct.”
The parson was growing red in the face.

Sanborn dared not laugh, but found it difficult. It was not the pastor's anger that amused him, nor that the girl would try the parson for a fool, but the simple thought of Rebecca jousting with scholarly divines and besting them now and again on thrust or parry.

“We've had our differences on the technique and purposes of illustration and portraiture, I can tell you, Pastor,” he finally said. “She has a way of leading you into readily sprung traps. She's too easily underestimated, from her youth and sex. But I've seen her also dutiful—a model of charity, and familial responsibility and modesty. However, I think that her intelligence overruns her, when she strains after accomplishing what . . .—well, how to put it?—what is in her. Has she shown you her Watts?”

“Indeed she has.” The parson seemed to be calming down somewhat. He sipped at his glass before going on. “Impressive, and in their own way appropriately sacred, I must say. I could hardly credit the work to the little saucebox before me. Yet I reminded her of the greater weight of her filial duty.”