Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction

by Robert J. Begiebing

  For the first time Captain Carlyle looked up toward the altercation. The sharp anguished cries of the dog penetrated the room, and all three men inside had now an unobstructed view of the proceedings. It was the big woodsman’s turn to laugh and cheer on his mate, and soon the scampering little dog went down beneath the merciless blows. But just as the dog was falling, Carlyle leaped up and ran out, grabbed the stick out of the man’s hand, lifted the man completely above his head, and tossed him headfirst into the nearby stream.

  As Carlyle turned, the big woodsman was making for him with his recovered stick. Carlyle raised himself up to his full height, his face red with outrage now. He dodged the stick aimed at his head and took the blow on the side of his left shoulder. He was incredibly fast for such a large man and managed to grab the stick as it slid down his arm, and then jerked the woodsman toward him. As the astonished assailant jumped helplessly forward, Carlyle sunk his great fist squarely into the man’s face and he went down, bleeding from the nose, like a man slowly collapsing in a dream.

  Now the captain stood over him, stick at the ready, as the dazed woodsman staggered to his feet and backed away, hand to his face smeared with his own blood.

  “If I see you again, I’ll kill you outright,” Carlyle said, calm now. “Pick up your cowardly mate and get out of my sight. Now!”

  As the captain went over to inspect the limp dog, Ladd and Sanborn came out into the tavern yard as if to insure the captain’s back would be covered as he bent over the terrier, which was still conscious but in obvious misery from what must have been several broken bones and damaged organs.

  The captain knelt over the whimpering, panting cur and gently stroked the fur full length with two big fingers. “Poor old brave heart,” he murmured and stood up. Shaking his head, he reached within his open greatcoat and drew forth a pistol, which he cocked and aimed at the dog.

  “Sir!” Sanborn called out, unable to help himself, but the pistol discharged, the little body jumped once, the pained eyes closed in peace, and it was over.

  McGuire had come running out of the stable and over to them at the sound of pistol shot. They all stood in a circle dazed and looking down at the unconscious Robie and his dead dog.

  “This man requires a physician,” Carlyle finally said, still calm.

  “There’s a midwife in Blackstone who can help,” McGuire said. He looked at Ladd, “Will you send her back, sir, as soon as you arrive? I’ll see to him as best I can in the meantime. Name of Mrs. Worthington.”

  “I’ll send her,” Carlyle said. “Worthington. I’ll see to it she’s warned to bring plenty of camphorated spirits for this man.” Carlyle turned to McGuire. “My horse ready?”

  “As you ordered, sir,” McGuire said, looking now toward the two woodsmen as they limped away down the crude road. “Dogs well fed, too.”

  “You see these cowards again,” Carlyle said to McGuire, “you tell them I mean it. I’ll shoot to kill the next time I lay eyes on them.” He turned to Ladd. “I’d be obliged, sir, if you’d bury this brave little champion,” he said. Ladd nodded in agreement. Carlyle walked toward the stable to get his horse and roust out his two dogs.

  Ladd and Sanborn helped McGuire carry Robie into the house and onto the bear rug. Ladd went out, buried the dog, and returned with his and Sanborn’s horses to the tavern yard. Sanborn heard him in the yard and left the host to tend to Robie alone. He mounted his horse and the two set off again for Blackstone, unable to speak to one another about the drama they had just witnessed, trying to think instead of the affairs that concerned them.

  Having much business of his own upon reaching Blackstone that evening, Ladd directed Sanborn immediately to the house of Tristram Prescott, the Wentworth cousin who had, as he now understood, taken in Rebecca. It was a rather fine two-story house, though modest by Portsmouth standards. The wife came to the door herself in a much-used apron over an entirely presentable gown. Sanborn found that Mr. Prescott was not at home, being at a meeting of the proprietors on some matters of taxation and road building.

  Standing in the doorway, Sanborn presented his profession and credentials, and as soon as Mrs. Prescott understood him to be recently in the employ of the Portsmouth Brownes and Wentworths, she became more solicitous and invited him in. She removed her apron and called to a serving girl for cider and cakes “after the gentleman’s long journey.”

  In the parlor room, she offered him a turned chair and seated herself facing him in a chair upholstered in fabric.

  “And do I understand you correctly, sir, that you had thought to inquire of our own interest in portraits?” she said.

  “Quite so, madam.” He offered his most charming smile. He was uncomfortable making an appearance in dirty clothes, but she seemed to take no notice of his traveler’s disarray. “I had thought that such respected families as yourselves might be in need of my portraits. Madam Browne had mentioned you in particular.”

  “Is that so?” she said blushing slightly in pleasure. “Well, that is recommendation enough. Yet my husband has not mentioned any thought of portraits, so you shall have to discuss the matter with him.” She smiled. “Or should I say, convince him of the necessity.”

  “And may I inquire, madam, as to how many family members you have? There is yourself and your husband . . .”

  She filled in where he hung fire. “And five children besides.”

  “Ah, I see. We can’t, of course, say whether Mr. Prescott will entertain portraits of each, or a family portrait or a children’s group, but I am anxious to be of service, whatever his preferences.”

  “He should return within the hour, and you may discuss it then.” The servant brought a pewter salver of refreshments and laid it on the table. Mrs. Prescott offered him some of the delicacies and poured them both a tumbler of cider. “Would you care for pipe and tobacco, sir?”

  “Perhaps after the cider, madam, if you care to join me. Thank you.”

  She blushed and sipped immediately from her cup and peered at him with a twinkle in her eye. “And how go things in Portsmouth, Mr. Sanborn?”

  He grew expansive, taking care to enlighten and entertain her with the doings of the port’s best society—their new governor (to whom they were distantly related), Parson Browne (who was, despite the name, no relation to the colonel) and his family, and so on. He continued to intimate his own revolutions in these circles of the well-to-do. And he even piqued her with a tale of his painting the portrait of one of the Wentworth clan’s enemies, Richard Waldron.

  “A most undesirable interloper,” she said. “And much too prideful by half. One of the saving graces of life in these parts, sir, is being free of the immediate presence of our professed opponents. These . . .”—she made a dismissive motion of her hand—“Waldrons and Vaughans and Gilmans, and the others.” Her face wrinkled in distaste.

  He laughed and she joined him. “Indeed, madam, they have all been a trial to your family, I understand.” He decided to engage in a little scandal to place them on firmer ground together.

  “And most unfairly, I assure you, Mr. Sanborn.”

  “Yet I can’t discriminate among my patrons, or I’d soon be out of pocket myself.”

  “Oh, I understand that, Mr. Sanborn. Commerce is, after all, commerce.”

  “But Mr. Waldron does harbor a vast cyst of ill will in his breast, I must say.” He put an amused look on his face and waited to see if she would take the bait.

  “I have no doubt of the lies with which he must have regaled you while at his sitting.” She shook her head. “Everything not to his personal and immediate advantage he takes for anathema. Every proposal, every vote, every grant and purchase not devolving honor and profit to him, he claims to be the result of the perfidy of others.” She stopped as if getting a little out of breath in her imprecations. “I suppose he was relentless in his disparagements.”

  “Rather so, I’m afraid, Mrs. Prescott. He made a charge very similar to yours, against our governor! But I learned lo
ng ago not to take to heart my sitters’ rants against their enemies. It was nothing more, I am sure, than the usual list of complaints of his family and associates against yours.” He smiled as if about to impart an amusing confidence. “That Mr. Wentworth was stacking the Assembly with his own men, and the Council with a gaggle of brothers-in-law, nephews, and cousins. That they had monopolized the mast trade by way of underhanded influence with Admiralty. That the governor had received unseemly gifts and bribes from lumbermen and mill owners, and was disbursing land grants, high military and judicial offices, and proprietary rights among friends, family, and supporters. I must say, I felt rather an apostate myself just to hear him refer to, in his words, madam, ‘that contemptible simpleton Wentworth.’ . . .” Sanborn paused to let the words take effect and watch his hostess grow flushed again.

  Then he added the final stroke. “He took great pains to assure me that Mr. Wentworth sits in the governor’s chair only because he was, in Mr. Waldron’s words again, ‘a bankrupt whose London creditors thought they’d never be paid, and so inveigled Newcastle to support him.’”

  Her face had been growing red as she listened. He made a mental note that it would be better never to repeat this list of charges in conversation with Mr. Prescott. “As if church and family associations counted for nothing,” he hastened to add. Yet Mrs. Prescott, he soon realized, was taking pleasure, as many do, in her dudgeon.

  “Of course,” she began, “he says nothing of the enormous benefit to the home government and to the colony itself—the merchants, timber men, mill owners, land owners, and every citizen great and small! Never has the province flourished, nor have so many benefited so much, as since Mr. Wentworth’s appointment to the royal governorship. On that I’m certain he is quite silent. Surely even such a creature as Mr. Waldron could now benefit from our independence from Massachusetts, if he so chose. But one cannot expect a pompous ingrate to admit it.”

  He felt that he had her in his confidence now, and that she would speak well of him to her husband. But he was unable to witness that conversation or its result because Mr. Prescott did not return. After they had been sitting for some two hours together, anticipating her husband, it became clear he had been detained by more pressing matters to the proprietors. She asked after his plans to lodge, and he admitted he had none, that even Mr. Ladd had no knowledge of a lodging house.

  “There is one being built to attach the tavern, but is unfinished,” she admitted. “However, Mrs. Sinclair, a widow, now takes in lodgers.” She told him how to find the Sinclair house. He made arrangements to return the next day to speak to Mr. Prescott. He decided to make a final bold inquiry, however, before taking his leave.

  “You spoke of five children, Mrs. Prescott, but I have not seen nor heard them about the house or its environs. Are they all abroad today?” He gave her a cheery, light-hearted look.

  “They are all engaged, sir, while the final light lasts, in the planting fields. It is, as you see, just Betty, who served us, and myself at home this evening. There is always so much to be done.”

  “I see,” he said and smiled. “Well, five children is a blessing, of course. They must be a great help and comfort to you. After the distemper, as I understand it, there were few families who escaped intact. So, you and your husband are twice blessed, to have five of your own dear children in your home.”

  “Yes, we are,” she said, and then added as if in afterthought, “though one is my brother and sister-in-law’s child, Rebecca. The entire rest of her family were wiped out in the sickness.”

  “Dear me. What a tragedy for your relations, Mrs. Prescott!”

  “Indeed, sir. She had lived with my husband’s cousin, Colonel William, for a time, but they decided she required the better air and discipline of rural life.” She smiled, as if she had been clever.

  Sanborn put on a look of some astonishment. “I might have met this young lady, briefly, while at Squire Browne’s, madam. She was quite a pretty child and showed me some paintings of her own.” He thought better, just yet, of explaining that he had painted the child.

  “That is she, but there’s no time for painting and reading here; she has a more common round to occupy her now.”

  She seemed almost curt, so Sanborn did not detain the woman any longer; he took his leave, promising to return at the appointed time.

  Chapter 13

  HIS HAY-FILLED MATTRESS at Mrs. Sinclair’s lay in a small but adequate room, and she was a friendly, bustling old lady. There was only one other lodger, who came to Sinclair’s later, to share the room. It was the officer in the provincial guard, Captain Carlyle from Londonderry. Sanborn now discovered he was traveling about the countryside to propose the best ways for roads and to assess the condition of peacetime garrisons, as if peace with the French were not expected to last indefinitely. And if in times of trouble, as he had heard, the men of the province preferred to enlist under a provincial officer rather than under a king’s regular, Governor Wentworth and Colonel Blanchard might have been grooming Captain Carlyle for future trust.

  Sanborn and Carlyle spoke not a word of what had passed at McGuire’s, but grew friendly over their jars of rum and molasses. One peculiarity was that Carlyle’s two great dogs went everywhere he did, inside and out, and they now slept wheezing like oversized lapdogs before Mrs. Sinclair’s kitchen fire while the men around the table in the fluttering light of candlewood spoke of their own adventures. Sanborn thought the dogs must be some kind of Teutonic war beasts—huge, of middling shagginess, one black and one brown, ever alert and patrolling while out and about with the captain.

  One confidence the captain offered was that his wife, Maria, at Londonderry, was the sister of an Indian friend who had been frequently at Portsmouth.

  “You might have seen him, Sanborn, name of Christo.”

  “Oh, yes. Heard of him. Performed services for the provincial government, and the like.”

  “That’s the man. I intend to enlist him in my company if the trouble starts again, and I find myself organizing a troop for the frontier.”

  “I imagine that would be helpful indeed, if, as you say, he’s by blood absolutely trustworthy.”

  “We have some good trackers among us, but you can’t do better than an Indian when it comes to discovering the enemy.”

  Some years later Sanborn would hear others refer to “Captain Carlyle’s squaw,” but no one seemed to think the less of him. And no one mentioned what he might have thought to Carlyle’s face.

  Before too long Sanborn felt fatigued from his journey and excused himself to go to his bed.

  The next morning over his breakfast of bacon and cabbage, Mrs. Sinclair informed Sanborn, upon his inquiry, that the officer had ridden off at dawn, “Like some invulnerable hero in a romance, sir,” as she put it. Sanborn had heard some stirring in the dark bedroom, but he had immediately fallen back into deep sleep.

  After breakfast, he walked about the town, awaiting his appointed hour with Mr. Prescott. He noticed the odd fencing immediately: whole logs piled on one another with short stabilizing blocks between them. Every house had its kitchen garden and cabbage vault, or root cellar. And there were many young orchards planted. Before leaving Portsmouth he had learned something of Blackstone, named for an original grantee of old, reverential Massachusetts lineage. His heirs had sold their interest in the land, including a rather crude settlement, to the current proprietors a few years before the Massachusetts–New Hampshire boundary disputes had been resolved.

  His thoughts turned to how he might best manage to see Rebecca again and talk to her directly. He imagined several seemingly incidental conversational ploys to try on Mr. Prescott when they finally met. As he looked about him again, he was impressed by the well-ordered town: its planting fields and kitchen gardens stretching behind neat houses, the busy mills and commons, the lowing of cattle and sheep, the bark of dog and crow of cock. Tradesmen—a blacksmith, a hat maker, a clothier and other retailers, and a tanner—plied their trade
s, mostly from their households. The town seemed a model of industry and beneficent proprietorship.

  And no one was more proud of the town’s success than Mr. Prescott, a principal proprietor. He was a man some ten or more years older than his wife, and with a distinctly cosmopolitan appearance about him. His clothes were fashionably cut and comfortably draped over his shoulders and paunch. His flaxen wig was of city quality and fashion, and well powdered. Sanborn could see immediately that, like his ornate snuffbox, he could sidle inconspicuously into the best circles of Portsmouth society upon emerging from forest and field.

  “So, you have come to Blackstone to assess our interest in portraits, Mr. Sanborn,” he said, after they were properly introduced and seated in the same chairs where Sanborn and Mrs. Prescott had held their conversation.

  “That is my intention, sir, after the recommendation of several in Portsmouth whose own portraits I have taken.” He dropped a few names of weight, mostly of the Wentworth faction.

  “Well, I can’t say as I’ve thought of it until this moment, Mr. Sanborn, but there is a certain appeal in the idea nevertheless.”

  “I’m delighted that you say so, sir. As I told Mrs. Prescott, I am wholly at your service.”

  The proprietor seemed to mull the idea a bit before speaking. “Perhaps a portrait of myself and Mrs. Prescott would not be remiss,” he finally said, almost as if thinking aloud. “Of course, matters press me here, Mr. Sanborn, as you saw even yesterday. I was not in my own house and bed till midnight. There may be certain difficulties about the arrangements, practical considerations.”

  “I understand, sir. My time is free, while I am here.”

  “How many sittings necessary, did you say?”

  “That depends on my patron’s specifications, finally. But as a general matter, three or four is common.”