Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction

by Robert J. Begiebing

  “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

  ONE 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.

  Dear Mr. Sanborn,

  It has become clear that Colonel Browne has not settled, and may not for some while settle, on my disposition. I am therefore requesting that you return my folio of drawings to me via Abigail that I might resume my private musings. We can count on Abigail’s discretion, and despite my responsibilities here, I have more leisure and privacy now than I’ve had in years. I do not believe my humble collection would be discovered, nor that I would be without resources to continue, in private and rarely enough, further compositions. I know not what the future holds for me, and I wish to improve my time while I can. I know you would not refuse me that which you, above all others, understand provides for my peace of mind.

  By the by, sir, so far as I can tell, nothing of the fiasco my paintings caused in Blackstone has reached Portsmouth yet.

  Yours faithfully,

  Rebecca Wentworth

  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.

  HIS 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 association
s 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.

  THE 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.”

  “I think if she were to find some exercise of her gifts, she would be more compliant and purposeful.”

  “That may be true, but it is not her decision, as I troubled to remind her. She forgets that, all too conveniently for the moment. But I daresay such forgetfulness will cause her enormous inconvenience in the long run. Do you suppose she continues to produce any of those maniacal illustrations, in secret I mean?”

  Sanborn stumbled. “As before? Had you seen them?”

  “No, but Madam Browne once described some of them to me in detail.”

  “It’s possible, of course. You saw that she continues her more sacred productions. . . .” He hesitated. “But, really, I don’t know enough to report.”

  “You seem uncertain, Daniel.” The parson looked narrowly at him. “She perhaps confides in you, as a fellow dauber.”

  “She has, to some extent. I had offered to provide her proper training, once. Her guardians wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “And you have no reason to suspect her return to this pictorial . . . melancholy?”

  “I have nothing to go on, as I say, beyond her occasional spleenishness, as I believe Madam Browne reports.”

  “Yes. She does indeed.” The minister still fixed him with his penetrating gaze, as if he wished to ferret out some unspoken truth.

  Finally, the silence grew uncomfortable for both of them, so the parson continued. “She had better marry, I told the colonel, and provide for herself some more appropriate line of endeavor.”

  “You may be right there, Parson.” He laughed congenially. “She had suitors in Blackstone.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a minute. Though I expect they knew little enough of her outlandish ambitions. She’s a little upstart Camilla.”

  “Camilla?” Sanborn said.

  “One who has shaken off all female folly save dress and show. Virgil.”

&
nbsp; Sanborn laughed. “I assure you, Parson, she has never even learned the language of looks and glances, of the blow of a fan. What may appear as renunciation is mere innocence, and a passion for quite other things.”

  Sanborn thought it was very lucky Reverend Browne had never actually seen, apparently, the more fantastical productions of Rebecca’s pen, pencil, and pigment. Moderate though he was compared to the local Congregational divines, the curate of Queen’s might well have condemned her for such visions so powerfully expressed.

  “All passions in excess are un-Christian,” Parson Browne said. “This is what these itinerant Enthusiasts misunderstand. As you well know, I’m not a man of intolerance or narrow principles, Sanborn. I’m speaking of her familial and her civil duties. However, even love, if it does not first serve our duty, is certain to make us fail in that duty.”

  “She is fortunate, then, all the more, to have a man of your moderation as her counselor, Parson.” The parson nodded in agreement and refilled their glasses. “There was some trouble in Blackstone, following a visitation and much preaching by one such Enthusiast.”

  “Indeed?”

  He first assured himself of the pastor’s strict confidence, and then he explained what had happened, the frenzy of some of the populace and their turning on Rebecca for “a portrait or two she had done,” as he put it. The curate shook his head knowingly. Then Sanborn repeated that it was her good fortune to have a true Christian leader of his temper as her spiritual advisor.

  He was betting on Browne’s distaste for the New Lighters, aware as he was of Browne’s sermon “Against the Pernicious Doctrine of Enthusiasm.” He had a printed edition of it, and a passage came to mind as they spoke:

  By the lights of these Enthusiasts, these Illuminati, he is the best and most edifying preacher who is most presumptuous and unintelligible and can boldly anathematize all that dissent from him. Visions, Dreams, Trances are as frequent in our day as they were in those of Fox and Nayler. People making all manner of mouths, turning out their lips as if convulsed, straining eyeballs and twisting their bodies into unseemly postures. Nothing but Scotch Cameronian Divinity will go down with them, and thereby do they disturb our peace and promote division. These itinerants pour in from all parts to pelt us with their sermons and lectures, sometimes four in a day and into the night in a most disorderly manner. It is a specie of madness and frenzy.