Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction

by Robert J. Begiebing

  The passage to port seemed to take forever, but the ship finally limped into Turtle Bay with the tide and began searching for a proper mooring where the captain might arrange for repairs. Everyone was relieved just to have come through alive, but the captain had managed to hint darkly that it would not be possible for passengers to remain aboard while extensive work was done to the vessel. How, Sanborn wondered, would he and Rebecca afford lodging for perhaps several days, even before they would have to pay for lodging in Charleston while they earned their passage to the Indies? Might a commission be garnered quickly? That did not seem likely. Were they to starve, finally, on the streets of New York where Chance had for some reason planted them? He would have to explain now to Rebecca the full measure of their insecurity. He had, he saw now much too clearly, been a great fool. And now he would have to reveal himself a fool to Rebecca.

  There were about a half dozen passengers the first mate gathered together to disembark. The passengers were to be lodged at a fair price, the mate explained, at Mrs. Hog’s, a clean establishment with dining and a number of other dining rooms within a short walk. While they were below decks gathering their things, Sanborn described their frail estate to Rebecca.

  “I wondered if we might be near the end,” she said and looked away.

  He finished putting his things into his portmanteau and hurried the two of them up to the deck where the other passengers awaited them.

  As the mate conducted the passengers to Mrs. Hog’s, Dr. Warren appeared and fell in with Rebecca and Sanborn. “Sailing without a horoscope always tempts Fate,” he said. “I thought I’d die even before we sank. I was sure we were to sink!”

  Sanborn now noticed that if his attire was weather-beaten and old-fashioned, it was once of considerable expense. Dr. Warren explained that he had sojourned in New York on many occasions. He vouched for Mrs. and Mr. Hog’s at the corner of Broad and William Streets, recommended two other establishments to dine or to sup—in particular one Robert Todd’s establishment, which served as the start of the Boston Post Road. Then he began his inquiry into the nature of Sanborn and “your pretty wife’s” travels. Sanborn concocted a story of travels for his wife’s health to visit relatives in Charleston, which seemed to satisfy his curiosity. He then launched into a lecture on the people and habits of New York, where they might hear as much Dutch as English.

  “These people are of good cheer with strangers,” he advised, “being all, or most, good topers, but if ye cannot join them in their revelries they think nothing of standing aloof. E’en the gov’nor himself, Mr. Clinton, was a jolly one before illness plagued him. He exemplifies their knack for bawdy punning and wit. The government is under English law, y’see, but the chief men are Dutch—mayor, recorder, aldermen, and assemblymen.” He glanced at Rebecca, who had remained silent, and then winked at Sanborn. “And unlike Philadelphia ye’ll see plenty of handsome women here riding out in light chairs or walking the streets of an afternoon under their umbrellas painted prettily and all befeathered.”

  “Never been to Philadelphia, sir,” Sanborn said.

  The old man looked at him with a sort of pity for the untraveled. “Indeed,” he went on, “some were celebrated for beauty and intellectual accomplishment before they were eclipsed by their excellent marriages: Admiral Warren’s Susanna DeLancy and her captivating sister Ann. And Mrs. Clinton of course, whose ambition, clear intellect, and strength of will some say are still greater than her august husband’s.”

  That very afternoon, Dr. Warren took them to dine at Todd’s, where there was a mixed company, and where Rebecca and San-born found they had to excuse themselves soon after an enormous dinner of bacon, chicken, veal, and green peas, as the company around had settled in for bumpers to take them, perhaps, till supper. Rebecca soon found she preferred to excuse herself from all but the necessary mealtimes, thereby avoiding rather rowdy and eccentric company, while on occasion Sanborn stayed on for drinks and conversation, or such as passed for conversation among men in their cups and laden with food.

  At the Hogs’ table one evening, when Rebecca avoided supper, Mrs. Hog inquired after her health. Sanborn replied that his wife suffered from occasional attacks of vapors and melancholy, and at times found herself indisposed for table. Mr. Hog lifted his glass of charged punch and winked, as if vouchsafing a bit of wisdom from an older man to a younger. “There’s nothing to cure it for the ladies, then, sir,” he said, “but a vigorous and regular mowing.” Sanborn was taken back by such lewd wit in public, but he recovered momentarily. He had heard such language frequently since arriving in New York, but he now saw that his host’s wife and daughters thought nothing of it from husband and father.

  Rebecca tended to stay indoors, reading or sketching or conversing with Sanborn after he returned to their connubial room from the Exchange or the Merchants’ Coffee House and a few hits of backgammon or a game of chess. He had been meeting sundry persons and putting about that he could paint likenesses; he even entered a small advertisement in the Gazette. But within the first three days no patrons called.

  On the third evening when he returned to their room, she had locked the door and refused to let him in. After her refusal, she no longer spoke to him from behind the door. He shook the door, spoke to her earnestly but quietly from the other side, and rattled the handle, but he soon thought better of all that for fear he might disturb the house and be thrown out.

  He descended to the common room and began to drink with others he found there, well into their cups. At some point late that night, he ascended to their room once more, but still she would not let him in. He ended up sleeping in a corner, head on table, after the other tipplers left for their own dwellings or beds. Mr. Hog chuckled when he found him there upon closing the rooms.

  “Ah, sir,” he said, “‘tis nothing unusual, these falling-outs with the ladies.” He laughed outright. “They need their privacy now and again. But they always come ’round in the end.”

  Sanborn barely heard him. It was as if someone were speaking to him from a dream as he lay half-awake. He felt the man place a blanket over his shoulders at some point later, and then all was silence.

  Late the next morning the innkeeper, keys in hand, helped Sanborn up the stairs. He was about to turn the key in the lock when the door opened. Rebecca was in bed, still asleep in the darkened room. They were careful not to disturb her.

  Mr. Hog left and Sanborn lay down on the floor to nurse his hangover a while longer. He plumped some of Rebecca’s clothes that had been flung on the floor into a pillow. The room finally stopped spinning. His eyes and head ached, but he could sleep no more. Drowsing, waking, turning, he finally noticed for the first time that the room was covered with sketches and drawings and a painting or two tacked to the walls.

  So that’s what she’s been up to, he thought. What in the world could she have been thinking, excluding him and spending the last two days, perhaps longer, secretly, manically making these images?

  He lay there looking about. The room was not well lighted because the blinds were drawn. Some of the productions appeared quite strange, others less so, but it took him another hour still before he was ready to rise off the floor, soak his head from the pitcher of water, and scrutinize them in better light.

  As he opened the blinds somewhat and began to examine them, he heard Rebecca stirring beneath the bedclothes. He glanced over to her, but her eyes were still closed and she did not appear fully awake. The paintings were of the sort he would not wish anyone here to see. Among the drawings, less mystic, as he put it to himself, were many studies of heads and torsos of the Hog family, some of their fellow guests from the ship, and regular customers to Mr. and Mrs. Hog’s board and bar. Her depiction of Dr. Warren was quite comical, the others more somber. She had done them all from memory, and despite all he knew of her, the feat astonished him still. But even as he looked at the comparatively innocuous drawings, he knew that they would be unacceptable. They were perhaps less objectionable than the pain
tings she had done at Blackstone. Still, they penetrated the character of their subjects in a manner too unconventional, too truthful, to hazard a disagreeable response. Could she have possibly imagined she might sell these? Was that her object in producing them?

  “What do you think, Daniel?” Her voice from behind startled him.

  “As ever, these are exceptional.”

  “I had to do something!”

  “Yes, I see you did. But of course these as they are, Rebecca, cannot be shown, can they?”

  “Shown? I had hoped to sell them. What else would I have done them for with our precious materials? And there was little enough time left to us.” She got out of bed and began to pin up her hair as she stepped over to the wash table.

  “My dear. . . .” He hesitated, trying to think how to begin. “My dear, do you not see these excellent depictions might cause offense if taken wrongly?”

  “Offense?” She was washing herself quickly. “How are they offensive? I drew these people precisely, without pretext or satire—”

  “Rebecca! Have you forgotten the effect of your portraits the last time you assumed no offense? Would you have us on the streets?” Perhaps he was being too insistent. These drawings seemed, after all, less . . . he searched for a word, revealing than the Blackstone portraits.

  “Do you begrudge me earning our subsistence, Daniel?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m at the point, we are, to accept, to take joy in, anything that might contribute to our security. How can you doubt that?”

  She stood straight, wiping her face. She came toward him, looking at the drawings particularly. “I see no insinuations here,” she said. “Are you saying there is too much truth?”

  “Call it what you will, my dear; there is more of it than these common folk might bear.”

  She stood there in her nightgown, towel in hand, looking at them all again. Then, calmly at first, she began to tear them off the wall, crush them into balls, and throw them on the floor. The more she did so, the more agitated she became. As he stood helpless in his surprise, watching, she continued her destruction of the drawings and moved to the paintings. When she ripped the first canvas off the wall, he ran over and grabbed her arm to turn her toward him. Her other arm came around, as if unconsciously but vehemently, and struck him on the shoulder with the painting. Then she dropped the painting and her hand reached for his face, but somehow he managed to grab the hand first and, holding both arms now, arrest her thrashing movement completely.

  She writhed in anger and frustration for some moments while he held her. All the time she said nothing more, weeping silently, only her tears betraying the depth of her wound. Then almost as suddenly as the outburst had begun, it subsided. He released her. She would not look him in the eye. She returned to the bed, wiped her eyes, and put on her dressing gown. He dared not speak further.

  She then walked over to a small chest of drawers and pulled out a little sack with a drawstring. She pulled open the drawstring, reached into the sack, and drew forth a large silver ring with several bright stones in it. “Left to me by my mother,” she said, “upon her demise. It’s the only thing of value left to me in the world. It was the only thing of value she could claim of her own by then.” She did not explain her meaning, or the final circumstances of her father and mother. Her eyes were clear now; she had fully regained her lucidity. She looked down at the ring and the little sack. “You have found no work here. We are out of time and money.”

  He stared at the ring and Rebecca.

  “What’s left to us now, Daniel?” she said. “Debtors’ prison? Starvation as a final resort, once we are thrown into the street?”

  He hesitated. “We’ve already incurred debt beyond our means.”

  “Then it’s dire necessity.” She thrust the ring toward him. “Sell it.”

  “I’m not sure we can continue to the Indies. Perhaps Charleston, perhaps our luck will turn there.”

  “Only if you sell the ring. But this is no time to be fooling ourselves. Charleston is no sanctuary from my guardians.”

  He took the ring she held out to him and looked at it. It was beautifully done and possibly quite valuable. She was right, of course. She had careened from her frenzy to a clear-headedness that discomposed him, but she was now, suddenly, right. Desperate, angry, she was forcing him to admit what they already knew.

  On the advice of Mrs. Hog, he avoided the pawnbroker and found an honest buyer of jewelry in the city.

  Afterward, as he was returning to their inn, he felt ashamed. Instead of presenting him with a ring as a priceless token of her affection, she had been forced to sell it as a memorial to their desperation. He entered the tavern and thanked Mrs. Hog again. He turned to go up to report to Rebecca, and caught sight of himself in the tavern’s great looking glass. He started and stared a moment.

  His face had changed. What was it? The face of a failure? The face of a seducer?

  THE NEXT DAY they paid their debts. But they would now be reduced to watching the very last of their funds begin to dwindle, a circumstance that would soon trap them in the Dutch city with no means of further travel south or return travel home.

  Rebecca had no intention of another voyage by water. He doubted he could soon get aboard ship again himself. Upon inquiry, Sanborn learned that they had enough left to purchase overland travel on the post road to Boston. When Rebecca heard this, she grew very calm. She seemed to be quietly examining all the alternatives, like a mathematician eliminating variables. He did not see how he might return to Portsmouth. And despite the likely prospect of losing Rebecca, he could not help thinking that he might lose Gingher now as well. He would be alone, uncertain whether it would be safe to return even to an outlying town like Greenland.

  Rebecca, on the other hand, had little more to lose. Perhaps she would be able to offer a convincing case for having been delayed some weeks in Boston while Sanborn was persuading her into the incarceration her guardians desired. Even if she could be convincing, she would have no choice but to accept the madhouse or return home utterly pliable. Rebecca’s choices they turned over together and singly, waking and sleeping.

  In the end, while there was still money sufficient for their passage, they set out for Boston. He was to remain there, while she, after sending for the expenses of her final passage, went on to Portsmouth. Upon her return she would write to him of her disposition and his own prospects for return, if any remained. Further, as men who resided in the province of New Hampshire were currently being enlisted and impressed into a great army preparing to join the king’s forces for a final attack and reduction of Canada, Sanborn thought it better to remain in Massachusetts. He would be seen as a mere passer through, while the battle frenzy everywhere played itself out. It was all very simple suddenly; it was the simplicity of capitulating to powers much greater than oneself.

  EVEN AS they journeyed to Boston, Sanborn was plagued with doubts: about the strength of their bond, about Rebecca’s circumstances upon her return to Portsmouth. He was unused to such misgivings, to dreary thoughts of any kind.

  “There is still your Watts to consider,” he said against Rebecca’s silence, once their fellow passenger had fallen asleep.

  She looked up at him. “Watts? I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “It might mean, at the least, a modest return.”

  “It’s too late for that. And they would look at it quite differently now—my name, the family associations, my depictions of the doctor’s meditations on the more bitter of life’s potions and disparities.”

  “They did not seem to before.”

  “That was beforetimes, when they considered the piety only and made no comparisons to my illustrations that have frightened them. There’s a settled, well, a repugnance now. Successful publication would only open their wounds.”

  “Perhaps a pseudonym—”

  “It would be all the same to them,” she interrupted him and looked away. “How should that fool them now?”


  He had, of course, no answer to her question. In her lucidity she saw clearly anything that might provide foundation to their further persecutions. He would not go against her wishes after all they had suffered together, after his headlong folly. He would withdraw the manuscript.

  She looked out the coach window and said nothing more. It was clear she did not have it in her heart to speak further.

  As the post rattled over the long miles and they maintained hours of silence together, he realized how often in her presence he had felt his own dullness in comparison with her agile mind and brush. At times this sense of dullness left him in a sort of self-induced stupor. She had been deeply appreciative of the efforts and risks he had taken on her behalf; she had had absolutely no one else to turn to. He had tempted her to become his lover. But he began to doubt her love for him now as they rode north in defeat.

  Chapter 34

  Thursday, July 10, 1746

  Mr. Daniel Sanborn, Orange Street Tavern,

  Boston in Massachusetts.

  Dear Mr. Sanborn,

  I have been charged by Rebecca to inform you of matters since her return to Portsmouth. So far as her guardians are concerned, she has accommodated herself to their wishes and protection.

  She is to be married to Mr. Paine Wentworth, who was easily led to assume the young lady had come to her senses finally, as she really wished to all along, that he might soon be taking his rightful place beside her as lord and master. Colonel Browne, in relief one imagines, promised an ample portion and by all accounts the settlement is to be equally generous in turn, including, as I understand it, a handsome jointure of lands. Upon the third Sunday’s reading of the banns, Mr. Paine’s father, Jared Wentworth, Esq., pledged to build the bride and groom a fine house on family property in Kittery, and work has begun even some months before the marriage date. Among the Brownes and their closest circle, you, sir, would readily believe the atmosphere was tending toward the celebratory, if yet cautiously so.