by Jodi Daynard
The family returned from church at noon, and at one o’clock they gathered for Christmas dinner. Johnny had been quiet since their return, but Peter did not remark upon it. Johnny often went for hours without saying a word.
The first course was a delicious duck pâté, which had everyone murmuring approbation. Johnny took one bite of a round of toast before setting it discreetly to the side of his plate. The second course was a flavorful celery soup, and it was in the middle of this course that Johnny stood up from the table.
Alarmed, Mr. Fray looked up at him. “Are you ill, son?”
“Nay. Forgive me.” Johnny bowed. “But I only just now realized that I must return home.”
“What, now? Can it not wait till after dinner? What has happened?”
“I’m afraid it can’t wait,” Johnny replied, allowing the Frays to retain the mistaken notion that something very urgent called their guest away.
Frederick, who had managed to ignore Johnny since the incident in the kitchen, now looked at him through wary eyes. Johnny caught Fred’s look but glanced quickly away.
Now it was Peter’s turn to stand. “But it’s Christmas!” he exclaimed. “You can’t leave now. Besides, you can have no expectation of a ship’s leaving Fredericksburg today or even this week.”
“I know, and I’m very sorry. But while I endeavor to eat, my guilt eats at me.”
“Well,” Peter replied, sitting back down in a huff, “I plan to remain another week at least. And Mr. Jefferson remains until the New Year.”
“He’s here?”
“Not at the moment,” Peter said coolly, turning back to his meal, “but he returns this evening.”
“Yes,” interjected Fred. “Perhaps you’ll even be so fortunate as to meet his favorite slave, Sally.” The brothers laughed.
“Frederick!” Mrs. Fray cried. “How appalling!”
“Oh, we’re only fooling, Mama,” Peter said, though Johnny observed a knowing look pass between the two brothers.
“What mean you by all this?” he asked Peter.
“Oh, nothing. Fred loves to joke about these things. How even the mighty fall and all that.”
But as Johnny stood there trembling with mortification, he paid scant attention to the rest. His mind was bent on departure.
There followed an awkward silence during which Mr. Fray rose and scurried off to his study. He returned moments later with five shiny silver dollars. These he pressed into Johnny’s hand. The coins felt hot; they burned him, and for a brief moment he resisted.
“Please, son, it comforts me to know you have them.”
Johnny had no choice but to take the money.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now I must pack.”
Johnny bowed deeply and left the gathering; all, save perhaps Frederick, were astonished by their guest’s behavior.
He returned to his chamber. As he reached for his trunk, Johnny noticed that his hands were trembling. When he had finished packing, he moved into the hallway and crouched down by the folded blanket before Mrs. Fray’s chamber. There, he paused for a moment. Johnny was just removing something from his pocket when Harriet, carrying an armful of linens, emerged from Mrs. Fray’s room. Seeing Johnny, she started.
“Sir, can I help you?”
He opened his palm and showed her his pocketknife.
Harriet’s mouth opened as if she would object.
“Shh.” Johnny put a finger to his lips, then tucked his knife into the blanket’s folds. “There,” he said. “Use it.”
He descended at once, to find the carriage already waiting, ready to remove him from Moorcock.
“See you back at the college!” Peter called after him, now in great spirits after several glasses of wine. “Though I don’t see why you suddenly bear a conscience!”
Johnny was off, and the enormous brick house and waving people soon retreated and then disappeared altogether.
The packet from Fredericksburg would not leave until the following day, and Johnny was only obliged to stop one night at the tavern, which provided him excellent accommodation. But he could not settle; he paced much of the night, examining and reexamining what had happened. He cursed himself for his impulsive gesture. To what use might a young chambermaid put a boy’s knife? What a fool he was! That poor girl had no power. Even if she did, knives were plentiful on a plantation. She could have no earthly use for his. But he had needed to make some gesture, and so he had. Ah, well. Perhaps she would give the knife to a father or brother in need of it.
It was now nearly four in the morning, and Johnny finally lay down upon his bed and willed himself to think no more, though he knew that there remained a great deal to think about.
Later that morning, he boarded the ship. It had a good wind and made excellent time, arriving in Boston on New Year’s Day, 1795. From Boston, Johnny hired a coach, with the last of Mr. Fray’s silver dollars, to take him to Quincy. It was ten miles of straight road, though icy in places. When Johnny finally saw Lizzie’s cottage, he leapt from the moving chaise and began to run. The door opened for him, and he fell into his mother’s arms, so grateful to be home that he wept.
Part II
14
EVERYONE WISHED TO KNOW HOW JOHNNY FARED in Virginia. So he told them. He spoke of the beautiful light over the open hills, and his first foxhunt, and the hall with its many windows and skylights. He told them of the boar’s head dressed in bay leaves, and the peacock adorned in its own feathers. He told of the wassail bowl and the men in their fine red coats sitting erect upon thoroughbred horses. And, finally, he told them how he met the great Jefferson.
Abigail muttered, “I suppose he pretended to be a simple farmer.”
Johnny said, “Indeed, he wondered how Mr. Adams’s wheat crops fared.”
Abigail glanced cannily at Johnny, catching his drift. “Yes, all right,” she admitted. “They both pretend to be much less interested in politics than they actually are.”
Lizzie and Eliza soon excused themselves from the dinner table. A young woman of the parish was in travail with her first child, and both women would attend.
Eliza grasped her son’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re home,” she said.
“As am I.”
“I was wrong to forbid you to go. You’re not a child any longer, though I sometimes wish you were.”
“No, I’m not a child,” Johnny agreed. “But I probably should have heeded you. There is much to admire and much that is beautiful. But in the absence of true aristocracy, they hold themselves to be aristocrats, Mama. Imagine that! They see themselves as paragons of all that is fine and jolly and good. They truly believe they are virtuous. Why, they out-British the British!”
Eliza had meant to change the subject, but as Johnny spoke these last words, she grew suspicious.
“Johnny, did something happen in Virginia? Were you harmed in some way or—did you speak out of turn?”
“I admitted that we knew the Cumberbatches. Apparently they are particular friends of the Frays.”
“Oh, Johnny,” said Eliza. She sighed. “That is too close for comfort. One word of inquiry shall tell them precisely who your father was.”
“I don’t think they were overly curious, Mama.”
“Let’s hope not.”
Eliza sent her son a mournful glance and had nearly gone out the front door when she turned around, convinced that her son lied to her, by omission if nothing else. She could always tell.
She pulled him toward her, out of earshot of the others, and asked, “Was it very awful, Johnny?”
At her entreating look, Johnny broke down. “It was—oh, don’t ask me to share with you what I saw! It was horrible, so horrible I shan’t ever forget it. I had imagined such things happening. And the way it felt, to do nothing. To be silent—” he shivered. “I stood up from the Christmas dinner table and fled!”
But instead of being shocked, Eliza placed a hand on her son’s arm. “I stood up from a Thanksgiving dinner table once. I refused t
o eat the meal because your father had been whipped for hunting the meat for us. He went hunting for our benefit, not his. He broke his curfew to do so, and because of that my uncle punished him. My family shunned me for two weeks.”
Johnny smiled slightly, consoled to hear his mother’s story. Then he said, “You feared for me, Mama, and you were right. Moorcock was nothing like our Barbadian plantations. It was worse. At once more beautiful and more villainous.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“Ours is a small island. What cruelty there is, what travesties of common humanity, are apparent to all. There is no hiding. But Moorcock is so vast, and there are so few witnesses, that one might easily deny it all. The Frays do deny it, Mama. Even to themselves!”
Eliza had her own opinion, namely that the Frays had no need to deny anything. No one in the South would hold them accountable, even were the cruelties to become known. Yet she said only, “But Johnny, there is no need ever to venture South again, if you do not choose to.”
Johnny hugged his mother to him and replied, “I sincerely hope I shall never go South again.”
Several days later, when Johnny finally woke up in his own chamber at Cambridge, he had the sensation that the entire journey had been a lurid dream. His mother had tried to warn him. He had been annoyed with her and disobeyed her. But she had been right, and he had been wrong.
Through the haze of his unpleasant ruminations, Johnny thought he heard a ping against his window. He lay there for a moment. Then he heard another ping. The icy floor shocked him awake as he threw his dressing gown over a flimsy nightshirt. He looked out the window. Kate stood below, peering up toward him, unable to see beyond the sky’s reflection in his window. As he bounded down the stairs, Johnny removed his nightcap, which sent his curly hair springing about his head.
A flood of icy air hit him as he opened the door. Kate’s face was eclipsed by a bonnet, scarf, and eyeglasses, and she wore a full-length cape.
“How was your trip?” she spoke to him through the crack in the door. “Mama tells me you went to Virginia. Was it very beautiful? I’ve heard about plantations but have never seen one. But it’s cold! Shan’t you let me in—the hall, I mean?”
“Kate.” He frowned. It was awkward to stand there in his dressing gown, the wind lifting his nightshirt.
“Oh, pardon me!” She blushed and put a hand to her mouth. “I’ve been up for hours and have forgotten my manners. I merely came—Mama wished to know—whether we shall have the pleasure of your company this afternoon. The little ones long to see you.”
“Yes. It’s been too long.” Johnny bowed.
Kate curtsied. “By and by, then,” she said, inwardly scolding herself for her awkwardness as she turned back to the road. Luckily, Johnny noticed only that she looked slightly cold.
After dressing, Johnny crossed the path to the commons. It was nearly empty. Few had yet returned from vacation. The boy whom everyone shunned, Eliot, sat at a table by himself. His thin blond hair touched his collar. He was hunched over, swimming in his large blue coat. With his hands upon the cane poised between his knees, he reminded Johnny of a great blue heron.
“May I?” Johnny asked, pointing to an empty seat.
“Of course.” Eliot coughed slightly.
“Did you have a good vacation?”
Eliot nodded. “Tolerable. I remained here, actually.”
“Oh? Did not your family insist upon your returning to Connecticut?”
Eliot glanced away. “Travel tires me. And let’s just say that neither party was devastated.”
“Indeed?”
“It’s a long story. So, how was the venerable South?”
Eliot’s tone was lighthearted, but Johnny could not joke about it. “It was very beautiful,” he managed to say. “But I shan’t be going back there anytime soon. Shall we finish our meal and head back to my room to discuss—what was it we had planned to discuss?” Johnny pretended not to remember.
“What is genius?”
“Well, shall we?”
“Yes, but let’s go to my chamber instead.”
Johnny walked beside Eliot as they moved slowly across the commons, down the steps, and across the path. Eliot lived one floor above Johnny and Peter.
“Voila,” he said, finally opening his chamber door.
It was a capacious room, cozily decorated. On one wall stood a tall shelf full of books. On the floor was a fine Turkey carpet. There were several lamps, and a worn but comfortable-looking wing chair poised by the fire, complete with footstool and blanket.
“Aren’t you lucky,” Johnny said enviously.
“Lucky to have no one willing to room with me, do you mean, or to have no friends? I tried to befriend that fellow Shaw, but he was even more snobbish than I. And my roommate moved out when he perceived I was ill.”
Johnny’s eyes then lit upon a heap of blood-tinged cloths in a basket beside the bed. He looked away.
“But surely you have friends,” Johnny said.
“As you know, the boys here consider me a freak.”
Johnny said nothing, but Eliot chuckled.
“Sorry. That sounded like a lament. I’m actually rather contented. The unfortunate thing is, I’m a social creature by nature.”
“From what do you suffer?” Johnny blurted.
“Consumption. Very romantic.” Eliot adopted a classical pose of grief, wrist to forehead, eyes to sky. It made Johnny smile. “Yes, the scholarly life suits me, and my parents feel I must be educated on the slim chance that I survive, in which case I should be obliged to earn a living.” Abruptly, he changed the subject. “But were we not going to talk about genius? They say you are one. Why do they say that?”
“I suppose it’s because of my memory.” Johnny shrugged. “My esteemed roommate made sure everyone at college knew. As you know, the response was not positive.”
Upon the mention of the Common Sense debacle, Eliot looked sympathetically at his new friend.
“Well, perhaps there is a lesson in it for you.”
“What is that?”
“You must be on your guard. Here, people are not always what they seem.”
“And you believe them to be more so elsewhere?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere else. But nowhere could be more two-faced than our own beloved country just now.” Eliot sat down in the wing chair and pulled the blanket over his legs. “Would you kindly put the kettle on? I—can’t be bothered.” He laughed, then coughed.
Johnny did as he was asked. While he waited for the water to boil, he thought: Perhaps it is true, what Eliot suggested. The treachery Johnny had known back home was rarely covert. The boys got angry and fought or pulled out their knives. They would never have suggested he record a book from memory for the sake of a wager—not in a million years!
Johnny made the tea and set a dish down on the table beside Eliot, who took a sip and sighed. He began, “I myself am possessed of an excellent memory, though not such a one as yours. However, even you must admit that the simple retention of information without deep understanding cannot be called genius.”
“I wholly agree,” Johnny replied.
“But let’s take an example. You’ve read Common Sense. Memorized it to the letter, in fact. But were I to ask you whether Common Sense bears any relevance to our current state of affairs, what would you say?”
“I—well, yes, surely it does.”
“Surely? Are you, in fact, sure? You haven’t given it much thought.”
Johnny turned a deep shade of red.
“You see. And the answer is that in fact it is irrelevant. A fossil from the antediluvian era.”
“But—”
“Paine’s a fool,” Eliot concluded. “He happened to say the right thing at the right time, but he was wrong then and more so now.”
“Why say you so?” Johnny, though wounded by Eliot’s dismissiveness, remained curious.
“It’s obvious. Paine’s call for a single
unified body to represent the people directly would have been catastrophic, had it been implemented. Thankfully, Adams saw the problem with direct democracy at once, which you would know for yourself had you read his Thoughts on Government.”
Johnny cursed himself for not yet having read that work.
Eliot went on, “But even this, my excellent critique of one previously so revered, can hardly be called genius. Many have such a fine faculty. Yet in being critical, I do not create anything new. I merely tear down. A genius must go beyond memory or even critical understanding. A genius must create something new, or at least provide a new way of seeing the world.”
Johnny felt brought down, but then he had a thought that made him laugh out loud.
“What is so funny?” Eliot asked.
“I must thank the ancient gods that I have found the antidote to hubris.”
“Really?” Eliot looked interested. “And what is that?”
“His name is Eliot Mann.”
“Oh, ha ha,” Eliot said. “Very amusing.” After a few moments, Eliot suddenly asked, “John, are you in love?”
“In love? Now, you mean?”
“Yes. You know, with someone. Some female or other,” Eliot said the word with some distaste.
“Oh.” Johnny understood the question. “Terribly so, in fact. With the most beautiful girl—she is absolutely heavenly. Alas, when we met I stood before her mute as the village idiot.”
