Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction

by Robert J. Begiebing

  I make bold to suggest that you and I might finally exhibit a degree of comfort and complacency, if we would only avoid fatuousness, over our ultimate success in unraveling the puzzles and dilemmas of Rebecca Wentworth—and steering her toward the safe harbor of matrimony, a situation that will provide comfort and fashion, for herself and her heirs, all their days.

  As to your own reputation, Miss Wentworth wishes me to assure you that nothing has been tarnished. You are rather famously touted as the hero of an insoluble family drama, ever tending to tragedy, who has by singular efforts cut a Gordian knot.

  I do think, if I may be permitted a personal suggestion, that you would do better to remain in Boston until all is quite settled and Rebecca fully enamored of her prospects for a new life. At that time, I will ask her to send for you, and you may return in proper, if wisely subdued, triumph.

  Your respectful servant,

  Adeline Norris

  Sanborn began to see, as he suspected Miss Norris must have, visions of epithalamic revels in his head—organ music, flower petals, toasts and dancing, jovial (even florid) relations and friends. The only thing that unsettled him was a subsequent letter from Rebecca summoning him to Portsmouth sooner than he had hoped.

  Monday, August 4, 1746

  My Dear Mr. Sanborn,

  Our wedding plans, previously expostulated by Miss Norris in her letter to you, have been moved forward considerably. No one but Mr. Wentworth, his father, and my guardians know, but I am with child, so this is the only course to take. I have made up my mind fully to this marriage. Mr. Wentworth believes the child his own, and I have not found it necessary even to assure him that such is the case. Would you please do us the honor of attending our celebrations, beginning the twelfth of next month, in Queen’s Chapel and at the home of Colonel and Mrs. Browne?

  The letter went on for two pages, but he read it all without comprehension. For God’s sake, a child. What had he, her lover, expected? Mr. Wentworth believes the child his own, and I have not found it necessary even to assure him that such is the case! So they, too, had become lovers. She must have done so to seal this marriage, while absolving herself (and Sanborn into the bargain) of the early fruits of their reckless passion. She must have sensed her pregnancy early on.

  And what could he do about this whole turn of events that would not be futile, or worse? Rush in and dishonor her while making a fool and a knave of himself in the process? “The young man who corrupted Rebecca Wentworth.” He could hear them now. “A scandalous young bawd.” And so on. She would be utterly lost. And he? He, the source of her “corruption” in their eyes, would be ostracized.

  His actions had also assured, he saw now, that in another sense she would be lost to herself—she was to be a femme covert, utterly subject to her husband. Surely Rebecca had seen all this and had acted out of a sort of womanly courage and fatalism that would forever separate him from her. Everything had been settled and sealed, and there was nothing to be done but accept her choice and save his skin, just as she had saved her own.

  1748

  The Bill for ye more effectively preventing Cursing & swearing having been read three times, Voted unanimously, That it pass to be enacted.... Mr. Secretary bro’t down ye above mentioned Bill & said Council were of opinion that said Bill ought to be perpetual.

  —Journal of the House of Representatives under the administration of Governor Benning Wentworth, Thursday, June 18, 1747

  I hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in defense of real Christianity, such as used in primitive times . . . to have an influence upon men’s belief and actions: to offer at the restoring of that would indeed be a wild project. . . and would be full as absurd as the proposal of Horace, where he advises the Romans all in a body to leave their city and seek a new seat in some remote part of the world by way of cure for the corruption of their manners.

  Therefore I think this caution was in itself altogether unnecessary . . . since every candid reader will easily understand my discourse to be intended only in defense of nominal Christianity; the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent, as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and power.

  —Jonathan Swift, An Argument against Abolishing Christianity

  Chapter 35

  SANBORN PULLED UP in his chaise before Hawkshead Hall, home of Squire Paine and Madam Rebecca Wentworth. He had been commissioned to paint a mother-and-child, the heir apparent, who was now approximately two years of age. He expected three or four sittings, given their specifications, and had made arrangements to stay over at the Hall until completion. There had been a second child as well, a girl named Seafair of some six months now, but she was not yet of an age that her parents wished a portrait. However, as he turned his horse over to livery and walked up the cobbled walkway to the main door, Sanborn had every expectation of future commissions of the daughter and the squire himself.

  The great house struck him as an odd affair, cultivating a rather too-refined European taste, perhaps. The roof of the edifice was surmounted by a balustrade, as if to form a high terrace from which to observe the grounds and the greensward leading down to the magnificent river. He could see extensive gardens and graveled walks bordered with box.

  He was shown in to a conservatory of plants, an extension immediate to the house, the servant telling him that his mistress wished that the gentleman observe the room.

  Sanborn looked about him. It was high autumn, but the large-windowed room was warm, despite two partially open sashes, and unnaturally late blossoms nodded from branches and stems. He thought that it would be like Rebecca to shun the conventions of background and request a painting in situ and detailed from life. He expected she would ask the same as to garmenture and attribute. It did not please him to do so, but he was being paid well and the lady required a certain amount of indulgence.

  Feeling someone was watching him, he turned toward the doorway he had come in, and there stood Rebecca in a rich silk brocade dress of light blue, her abundant hair caught in the light and done up high on her head, looking every bit the lady of the manor. She rather stunned him, by both her beauty and the suddenness of her appearance, like some creature emanating from a better world.

  “You’ve come then,” she said and walked toward him with her arms extended.

  “Did you for a moment doubt I would?” He took her offered hands.

  “There were days, I fear, I was burdensome.”

  “If that were ever so, they are long past, madam.” He made a little bow. “A beautiful room,” he added, looking about.

  “A little too English an indulgence, as my husband said when I proposed it, but, yes, it is, barring winter, my favorite place. My private bower.”

  “I noticed the comfortable chairs, the reading couch,” he said, still looking around.

  “Even in the depths of winter, this can be the warmest room in the house, if only the sun shines.” She smiled and he was charmed all over again, as he had been years ago, in another bower, by a child in white.

  If only, he thought. The previous winter snow had begun on November twenty-seventh, and held for twenty-six days. The deep snows lasted till the end of March, no men or horses able to break a way before that time. This room must have been miserable enough all winter, even with the heat of charcoal fires. And then after a brutal winter, the summer had brought a great drought, and many fires far off in the woods.

  “That is well planned then indeed,” he said, “if you have even a week or two in here between a November and April like the last.” He smiled. “When I was shown in I had the feeling that you would prefer the portrait to be taken here and to fully reflect the actual setting. Was I right, Mrs. Wentworth?”

  “How did you know?” She offered a modest laugh.

  “Our long acquaintance.”

  “Do you accept?”

  “I’m here at your service.”

  “Then you’ve quite learned to expunge painterly formulas and conven
tion, after all,” she said. She smiled playfully, as if to be sure he recalled their long-ago discussions, as if she knew he had expunged no such thing. She knew as well as he that every portrait was an advertisement.

  “Shall we agree on a precise site and background?” He extended his arm for her to lead him.

  She chose the couch, before a stand on which a pot of exotic white blossoms he could not identify had somehow been forced into late bloom. They discussed the angle of view, her and her son’s posture, the extent of background to be included, attributes for mother and child, and several other incidentals. She then called for a servant; a man appeared and was told to have the governess bring in her son, Giles. While they were waiting Sanborn began to set up his easel, canvas, and colors. Rebecca tried several postures for comfort and endurance of sitting.

  When the child arrived, dressed in a darker blue petticoat that complemented his mother’s skirts, Sanborn was introduced to the youngster, who was quiet with the stranger. They made some childish banter, the boy grew more relaxed, and they decided on a final arrangement for the sitting.

  He was extremely curious about the child, of course, but he tried not to be obtrusive. He felt a certain affinity toward Giles, perhaps merely an affinity he was all too prepared to feel since Rebecca’s letter two years ago announcing her new marriage date. He noticed, as well, the boy’s already abundant brown hair, hazel eyes, and ears lying close to his head. He was reminded of a drawing of himself Rebecca had executed years ago. She had joked that he had the intense, narrow eyes of a demon. “Women like them,” he had replied. And they had laughed. Now the boy had those burning, clear eyes. The child and mother seemed at their ease together.

  AFTER THE first hour of the sitting, Sanborn changed the direction of their innocuous conversation. “Have you found you are able to draw and paint, Mrs. Wentworth?” he asked. He hoped to drop the colder formality he had observed upon first meeting her in the conservatory.

  “Alas, Daniel, little more than an occasional watercolor, an acceptable glass painting perhaps. I find my duties here rather consume me.”

  He was not sure he believed her. “But you appear so ... settled in these elegant circumstances, so at ease. You must have found being mistress of a grand house, and family, sufficient occupation and pleasure.”

  “It’s true, I’m fully occupied. And I’ve come to love this place.” She hugged her boy to her. “And my children.” The boy looked up and smiled at his mother. He was being remarkably docile for a second hour of sitting. But he was a winsome child, and he basked in her attention.

  “And where, may I ask, is Seafair?”

  “Oh, with the wet nurse, who cares for her at such times as well.”

  Had she really given over her visions and illustrations, Sanborn wondered, so that she might finally live at peace with the world, share in its benefactions? He found that perfectly understandable—and preferable. Moreover, she had grown into full womanhood, he assured himself, and the authority and dignity of her position had matured her. Anyway, to accommodate the prick of skepticism now would distract him from his task.

  His task was to embody her current serenity, the expression of this woman she had become. Mistress of a grand house, amiable hostess among the quality of town, beneficent young mother whose fruitfulness, like her full white bosom, adorned her, lover of flowers and clothing and furniture—these were the characteristics he wanted his painting to depict, the attributes his patron had hired him to display.

  After the second hour he suggested they stop for the day. She did not ask to observe the painting’s progress, and he was thankful for that. He would carry on some time longer to put the final touches on the first day’s work, but he did not want to tire them, or become tiresome. He wanted, moreover, a freshness about the work, a freshness Rebecca deserved. He would try to please them both—Mr. Wentworth and Rebecca. Her portrait would display his lady to advantage in every conventional sense, yet he would try to suggest something of her extraordinary mind and spirit, or at least some individuality of face. He didn’t know whether he could accomplish both goals, and if he found it was beyond him, he would have to suppress the individual in the conventional. But he was going to try for both, for something closer to Rebecca herself—not merely Mrs. Paine Wentworth.

  Within another hour he had completed the first day’s work. Then a servant showed him to his room where his bag had been placed and where he settled in for the next couple of days.

  Later, before the supper hour, he met Rebecca in the garden for a tour, as he had requested. Being outside the confines of a city’s house lots, the grounds and garden were extensive. They sloped down toward the mighty river—a series of paths and plantings and views that someone had labored to design and install.

  She knew all the names of shrubs, trees, and autumn flowers, as if they were her particular charges. Servants had been cleaning up the beds against the arrival of deeper autumn. The areas of lawn were still green and half the trees still clothed in brilliant leaves. It was the cusp of seasons—looking toward that dreary time of ever-shortening days, drizzle, and snows yet to come. And the early evening light was pleasurable, the air bracing and pure. He felt a sharp flicker of old love at his heart, but he struggled to send it away. He tried to tell himself that he had not come here to be hurt. He had come to execute a fine commission, to exercise his own powers and talents, to embody a lovely woman and child in an enduring portrait. He had never been painting better, and his practice flourished. Portraits of the Paine Wentworths were but one more trophy to bolster his claim to be an English painter of the first order in the New World.

  “The boy is remarkably well behaved, for one so young,” he said, tiring a little of their conversation of the vegetable kingdom.

  “He is sweet. He’s never given his mother, or the servants, a hint of trouble.”

  “There seems a mildness to his nature.”

  “Just so,” she said and smiled.

  “And your baby daughter, is she much the same?”

  “She’s very young, of course. But she’s a good baby. Mr. Wentworth believes she’ll prove to be rather headstrong, and he may be right.”

  “It’s very early.”

  She laughed a little. “She’ll show us soon enough who she is.”

  “Her mother has been known for her headstrong trait.”

  She laughed again, more openly now. “As you well know, Mr. Sanborn.”

  “But even the headstrong grow to adulthood and find means to accommodate themselves to things as they are.”

  “It was ever so.”

  “And you are quite . . . content now? Here?”

  She looked at him as they continued walking. “Who would not be, Daniel? There is a security here in our remoteness from Portsmouth as well, which I was glad to discover when the smallpox troubled town last year.”

  “I left town myself,” he said. “I was one of several acquaintances who left.” He did not tell her that he had escaped to Boston that June and July.

  “The whole legislature nearly adjourned to another town for the duration,” she said, “but they thought better of it, as if it would signal the Port were cursed, as some put it. Finally they believed such a move would be bad for commerce. So they stayed on.”

  “I heard something of that—”

  “Nonetheless,” she interrupted, “I don’t know how I could live, now, without my children. They sustain me. And you see how pleasant it is here, in this removal from town.” Her arm swept around the garden.

  “There is a joy to life it is madness to avoid,” he said. He looked at the river as they approached the grassy bank, boats and ships plying the tidal waters. Church spires lifted above Portsmouth on the opposite bank a half mile or more in the distance. Everything appeared well ordered and fitting at just that moment. He understood how she must feel, walking here in the sunshine on fine days, perhaps with her son, or her husband of two years. Save the sudden bludgeons of disease or domestic tragedy or w
ar, one might come to see how well—yes, how beautifully—ordered things are. One might embrace life no matter what one had endured. Perhaps that, he thought, was her final accommodation, the flower of her maturity.

  “I’m often uneasy close to the river,” she said, as they continued their downward progress toward the bank.

  “But it’s radiant, and even more so in the full sunlight of an afternoon.”

  “Radiant, yes.” They drew close to the bank. “But you see how dangerous it is as well. The currents, whirlpools, tidal surges and undertows.”

  “Of course,” he said, as if placating her. “One must take care. A pilot is necessary. And it’s no place for the casual bather.”

  “My aunt died in this river,” she said, apropos of nothing in particular, so far as he could tell.

  “Your aunt?”

  “Colonel Browne’s younger sister. She was not literally my aunt, but Browne elder-women relatives are by tradition called ‘aunt’ by all the children. She took her own life.”

  “Really? My goodness, Rebecca.” He recalled Miss Norris’s tale of family woes. “Why did she do it? Does anyone know?”

  “She went mad in the middle of her life. Who knows the whys and wherefores of such things? They are more often a mystery than a puzzle with a solution, are they not?”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Moreover, his grandmother, Elizabeth Browne, took her life as well. Nearly in the same spot—at the beginning of the old Indian wars.”

  He stopped and turned toward her. “Miss Norris told me of her. She said nothing of the particular sister, however. Does Squire Browne then believe there’s some family . . .—what would one say?—curse, or something?”